Where St. James Hospital had stood for more than a century, Franciscan Health broke ground Wednesday for a new urgent care center in Chicago Heights that it expects to open in about a year.
The 10,200-square-foot building will include 11 exam rooms, laboratory space and an imaging and X-ray area, according to Franciscan.
It will replace an existing urgent care center southeast of U.S. 30 and Chicago Road, with that space being repurposed for a new use yet to be determined, said Allan Spooner, president and chief executive of Franciscan Health’s south suburban division.
Construction of the urgent care center “continues the legacy we began here 111 years ago,” said Sister Jane Marie Klein, chair of the board of trustees of Franciscan Alliance Inc., referring to the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration who opened St. James Hospital.
She said it was a difficult decision to close inpatient and emergency services at St. James, a fixture in Chicago Heights, in 2018.
Franciscan Health won approval from state regulators in March 2016 for the restructuring plan that called for a multimillion-dollar investment at its Olympia Fields campus while shuttering the Chicago Heights hospital, 1423 Chicago Road.
Inpatient and emergency medical services were consolidated at Franciscan’s Olympia Fields hospital, 20201 S. Crawford Ave. The Chicago Heights hospital was demolished, while adjacent medical offices, where the urgent care center is now located, remain.
Franciscan expanded the emergency department there along with increasing the number of medical/surgical beds and adding six intensive care unit beds. The work at the Olympia Fields hospital also included the addition of an obstetrics unit and physical rehabilitation services.
Speaking at the blessing and groundbreaking ceremony, Chicago Heights Mayor David Gonzalez noted he was born at St. James 60 years ago, and said it was an emotional time for city officials when they learned of Franciscan’s plans to shutter the hospital.
The mayor said a portion of the former hospital site will also be developed for 80 units of housing for veterans. Gonzalez said the city is working with Cook County on the project.
Franciscan’s urgent care center “is just the start of developing this whole parcel,” Gonzalez said.
Spooner said the new urgent care center is scheduled to open next fall and will accommodate more ambulatory patients in need of treatment for minor, non-life-threatening injuries.
“We have a lot of patients, particularly ambulatory patients, in this area who need a quick checkup,” he said.
Franciscan is not disclosing the dollar value of the project, Spooner said.
Initially, staff from the existing urgent care facility will relocate to the new center, but future staffing needs will depend on how many patients are seen there.
“Patient volume dropped a lot at the height of the pandemic but is gradually coming back up,” Spooner said. “At this point it’s tricky to say how many people we will need.”
In arguing its case for consolidating inpatient and emergency services at the Olympia Fields hospital, Franciscan Health told state health facilities regulators that both hospitals had a combined occupancy rate averaging 40% and that the Catholic health system was experiencing tens of millions of dollars in operating losses.
Franciscan said at the time that consolidating inpatient operations at Olympia Fields would save it between $18 million and $20 million annually.
In Hammond, Indiana, Franciscan also plans to eliminate most inpatient operations at the former St. Margaret Hospital, just across the state line from Calumet City, while maintaining a round-the-clock emergency department.
Like St. James, that 250-bed hospital has been a fixture in downtown Hammond for more than a century, with plans to raze virtually all of the hospital and build a new emergency room, eight-bed acute care hospital and primary care center on the site.
Franciscan says the hospital costs too much to maintain and that the need for a large number of inpatient beds has decreased as more and more procedures are performed on an outpatient basis.
mnolan@tribpub.com
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