Rush Oak Park Moves Forward With Plan For New $30 Million Emergency Department

Rush Oak Park Hospital is taking new steps in its plan to build a new, $30-million, state-of-the-art emergency facility, hospital staff announced in a release.

Last week, the hospital filed a certificate of need with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board for what it calls its much-needed “modernization project.”

Rush’s current emergency department is 50 years old and staffers are saying it's become hard to meet the growing needs of its patients and the increasing demand for emergency care.

When the current emergency facility opened in 1969, Bruce Elegant, the president and CEO of the hospital, said, it was designed to serve 15,000 patients a year.

Now, they see more than 37,000 patients in the ER annually.

Elegant said in the release that while the department has expanded throughout the past few decades, it’s still not enough.

“We’ve come to the point where we have converted every available square foot in its current location,” he said. And, he pointed out, with a larger and more updated facility, not only will patients see increased privacy, but they’ll be able to enjoy shorter waiting times.

The updated facility is planned to accommodate 21 individual treatment bays, as well as two isolation rooms, two behavioral health rooms and one room for the evaluation and treatment of sexual abuse patients.

“It’s about continuing to provide the emergency services our community expects and deserves,” Elegant said.

The plan for the new facility is actually for an entire one-and-a-half story building that will add up to 55,000 square feet, 20,000 of which will be devoted to the new emergency department. Program and building support will take up the remaining space.

The building is expected to stay on the current medical campus and replace the current Rush Oak Park Hospital Medical Arts Building, which was used as a nursing dormitory in the past but has been empty for two years now.

Robert Spadoni, Oak Park Hospital’s vice president of operations, said that hospital staff have already been largely involved in making the blueprints for the new facility. Physicians, nurses and staff members who work in the ER have all been involved in the plans.

“It’s been a team effort from the initial planning,” Spadoni said in the release. “From day one, the priority has always been to design a facility to make best use of the high-quality emergency services this hospital provides for the community. We’ve conducted multiple working efficiency modules and we are confident the final design will be more than accommodating to staff and patients.”

The hospital staff plans to meet with representatives from the Village of Oak Park about the new building throughout the next few months. If all goes well, Spadoni said, demolition of the Medical Arts Building could take place next spring, and the new facility could be up and running in late 2018 or early 2019.

Rush’s current emergency department will continue to serve the community through the completion date of the new facility.

“Rush Oak Park Hospital has a deep commitment to the community going back 100 years, and we intend to adapt to continue to meet the health care needs of residents in the future,” Elegant said. “Currently, we are striving to accommodate the growth in the community’s demand for outpatient and emergency department services.”

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Image courtesy of Rush Oak Park Hospital.