CHICAGO—University of Chicago Medicine and Sinai Health System announced last week that they will partner to build a Level I adult trauma center on the city’s Southwest Side, heeding longtime demands from city activists.
Holy Cross Hospital, part of faith-based Sinai, will renovate and expand its emergency department to achieve Level I trauma center status. The $40 million project is expected to take at least two years to complete and will be partially funded by the university.
Sinai, which operates a Level I trauma center at Mount Sinai Hospital on the city’s West Side, will provide trauma specialists including emergency medicine physicians, anesthesiologists, nurses and support staff, while UChicago Medicine will provide general trauma physicians, neurologists, orthopedic and plastic surgeons, urologists and other specialists.
UChicago also announced plans to build a new adult emergency department at its hospital in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where local activists had initially called for construction of a trauma center. That campus now has a Level I pediatric trauma center at Comer Children’s Hospital.
Members of the city’s Trauma Care Coalition have been calling for a South Side trauma center since 2010, when a young community activist died after being shot blocks away from the University of Chicago Medical Center.
The activists are pleased that the South Side will now have a trauma center, but are concerned that Holy Cross, located six miles southwest of UChicago, will not adequately serve residents located more to the east. They believe UChicago would have been a better location.
—Adam Rubenfire
