This article appeared the Waukegan News Sun over the weekend written by Dan Moran. The actual report mentioned in the article can be downloaded here.I think its instructive to see in a report, what we already know, its much easier to get to another Hospital from Lindenhurst. You have a 4 lane highway that takes you to the interstate in minutes or to state route 45 in seconds to get you moving to one.
Out here in Round Lake, its not that easy as we all know! The 45 minute drive for a Lindenhurst resident to the other hospitals mentioned in the report will be 60-75 minutes for residents in western lake county, which means Round Lake is a better site for the hospital.
WAUKEGAN -- The stars appeared to be lining up Friday against Vista Health's proposal to build a hospital in Lindenhurst with the release of a state report determining that the project "does not appear to be in conformance" with several key requirements.
A 42-page staff report from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which is scheduled to meet July 24-25 in Chicago to review the Vista proposal, basically states that the 140-bed hospital proposed at Grand Avenue and Deep Lake Road would be too close to current hospitals to demonstrate a need for construction.
"There are 15 hospitals located within 45 minutes travel time which provide medical/surgical and intensive care unit services, and 12 hospitals providing obstetric service," the report states, adding that this represents "a computed excess of (services) and facilities" in the targeted area.
Among the hospitals listed as within 45 minutes of travel time were Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Highland Park Hospital, Lake Forest Hospital and Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan. Also on the list are hospitals in Park Ridge, Schaumburg and Woodstock, along with the northwest side of Chicago.
The report added that several criteria must be met before a Certificate of Need can be issued for construction, including documentation "that travel times to existing providers is excessive (exceeding 45 minutes) ... Since none of the requirements for the criterion are met, a positive finding cannot be made."
The report also scrutinized the need to add 140 beds to the area's health-care roster, saying that Vista "(has) not adequately documented that the proposed new hospital is needed to serve an underserved population, (so) it does not appear that the project is the most effective or least costly alternative for meeting health- care needs in the area."
Attempts to reach Vista Health officials for comment late Friday afternoon, when the report was first available, were not successful.
Vista officials and backers of the project -- expected to cost $99.8 million -- have said travel times to existing facilities were dangerously high for residents in northern Lake County. When the Certificate of Need was applied for in March, Vista CEO Barbara Martin said, "There is an urgent need for a hospital in that area."
However, at a public hearing before the Health Facilities board in May, officials at several regional hospitals -- including Condell, Lake Forest and Northern Illinois Medical Center in McHenry -- argued that a Lindenhurst hospital would infringe on their "primary care zone."
Jodi Levine, Condell's vice president of marketing and business development, reiterated those sentiments after reading the state report late Friday.
"Lake County has a crying need for more advanced specialty services, not simply more hospital beds," Levine said in a statement. "A new hospital would completely undercut efforts to bring in Level I Trauma care, advanced cancer and neo-natal care or other high-level services. The staff has followed state rules, which are in place to protect health-care decisions from becoming political."
It remains to be seen what the board will do with the report's findings when it meets in 10 days, and what the findings might mean to Advocate Health System's competing proposal to build a hospital in Round Lake at Route 120 and Wilson Road.
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