NAPERVILLE, Ill.—Edward Hospital is asking the state for a certificate of need to build in Plainfield, about 13 miles south of its 236-bed home in the Chicago suburb of Naperville—again.
The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board rejected Edward’s plans for a Plainfield hospital twice in 2004. That prompted Edward to pursue a better result through administrative review of the board’s action, which failed, and a lawsuit in Will County Circuit Court challenging the decision, which was dropped in lieu of a fresh start.
The new Plainfield vision includes a 162-bed hospital projected to cost $235 million, compared with the previous plan’s 146 beds at $169 million. A separate application calls for a 30,000-square-foot cancer center, costing $18 million, which would combine unused space in an existing outpatient center with new construction.
The projects would add to a 60-acre campus that includes an immediate-care center and physicians’ offices, as well as a joint-venture surgery center scheduled to open in early 2008.
“Many community hospitals have morphed into regional providers, and we are one of those regional providers,” said Brian Davis, vice president for marketing.
Edward leaders are optimistic that recent revisions in the state’s CON law will favor proposals in fast-growing communities such as Plainfield, about an hour’s drive southwest from Chicago. Changes that became law in June direct the planning board to update its bed inventories, consider 10-year population projections and give more weight to migration data showing residents are leaving an area to get care.