MercyRockford Health System, the product of a January merger between Janesville, Wis.-based Mercy Health and Rockford (Ill.) Health System, plans to transfer most of its acute-care services to a new $400 million “destination campus.”
The five-hospital system's current Rockford facility, known as Rockford Memorial, will continue to offer emergency, inpatient and outpatient services. Most acute functions, though, will be at a new campus to be built off Interstate 90, extending the reach of the hospital's Level I trauma center to patients in southern Wisconsin.
The new campus, also in Rockford, will be home to a women and children's hospital that includes a neonatal intensive-care unit, pediatric ICU, high-risk maternity-care unit, and pediatric inpatient and emergency services.
Javon Bea, the system's president and CEO, said the existing facility continues to be well-suited to non-intensive inpatient care, but it wouldn't be cost-effective to retrofit the hospital for more advanced procedures. There's also not enough land on the existing campus to build a new hospital, Bea said.
The current campus will offer an ER, a walk-in clinic, surgical services, outpatient care and 94 inpatient beds, and will relinquish some of its existing space to local not-for-profits. The new facility will have 188 beds, half of which will be dedicated to the women's and children's hospital.
As a part of the plan, MercyRockford will eliminate 109 state-licensed hospital beds. Bea said the 28% reduction in beds is unheard of in the state, but argued that most hospitals could afford to give them up because many operate below capacity.
“We're actually (going to be) growing with more outside referrals by a third” because of the better access for southern Wisconsin patients, Bea said. “We're just saying let's not play the game anymore and admit we don't need all the beds we're licensed for.”
MercyRockford's strategy differs from construction trends across Illinois and the rest of the country, where many systems have entirely abandoned inpatient services in their aging facilities. Facilities like St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Belleville, Ill., and St. Alphonsus Health System in Nampa, Idaho, are converting their older hospitals to outpatient centers as they build new acute-care hospitals.
The plans are subject to certificate-of-need approval from the state. MercyRockford expects to win approval in November and begin construction in late 2016.
