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U. of C. Trauma and Cancer Centers May Be Too Much, Too Soon: State Report

By Sam Cholke | April 27, 2016 9:34am | Updated on April 28, 2016 8:43am
 The Mitchell Hospital building will be renovated for cancer patients after a new emergency room is build under a plan the University of Chicago submitted to the state.
The Mitchell Hospital building will be renovated for cancer patients after a new emergency room is build under a plan the University of Chicago submitted to the state.
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Courtesy of the University of Chicago Medical Center

HYDE PARK — University of Chicago Medicine’s plans for new trauma and cancer centers might be too much too soon, according to state regulators.

In a report released Tuesday, staff of the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board said the medical center’s proposed $270 million expansion outpaced the need and would cost much more than the state expected.

The medical center, though, said in a statement that the report actually bodes well for the project.

“We appreciated the staff’s time reviewing our extensive proposal and were pleased that the staff made positive findings on 16 of the 19 review criterion on the state board report,” Sharon O’Keefe, president of the medical center, said in a prepared statement. “We are encouraged to be one step closer to delivering the care our community wants and needs, and remain confident the board will see the merits of our proposal to increase access to care on Chicago’s South Side.”

Reporter Sam Cholke on questions being raised about the medical center.

The medical center will have to explain those issues when it goes before the nine-member board in May to get approval for its proposal, but the problems do not rule out a favorable vote.

The report suggested the medical center add five more medical and surgical beds, not the 168 new beds the medical center is asking for, based on the state’s own projections for patient need. It also recommended the medical center add 15 new intensive care unit beds, not the 20 the medical center is asking for.

The report pointed out that the medical center is asking to add beds when other South Side hospitals in the area have 557 beds that are sitting empty much of the time. One example is Jackson Park Hospital, which is using its medical and surgical beds about 35 percent of the time compared to the medical center’s beds being used 88 percent of the time.

The report can’t seem to get the medical center’s math to work out for the new emergency department either. The report says the medical center only needs 28 stations now based on its patient numbers, not the 36 it currently has. It also says the medical center should be asking for 10 new stations, not five new ones, if it really expects visits to climb to 86,220 per year by 2021 with a new trauma center.

The authors of the report also question why the expansion is going to cost so much, $115 more per gross square foot compared to what the state expects for a typical hospital expansion project.

“A good deal of the cost of this work is entailed by turning a 1983 building into one that will become a 2016-era hospital with greatly improved layouts and building systems that provide the correct environment for tertiary level specialty care for many patients who will be immune compromised,” the medical center said in response in the report.

The board could still approve the project despite the staff report’s concerns and has received letters of support from many of the hospitals that staff said were under-utilized.

The report does acknowledge that the university’s medical center is different from other South Side hospitals and it gets more seriously ill patients at its emergency room and more of those patients end up admitted to the hospital.

“In this respect, the medical center’s emergency department is not simply a destination for care, but a gateway to the tertiary level of services offered at the medical center,” the report says. “Many of these services are not offered, or at least not to the same extent, at the other hospitals.”

The project still needs to go before a group of emergency medical directors from other hospitals in the city who would have to figure out how the university’s trauma center would fit into the system and when paramedics would be told to take patients there.

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