Northwestern Memorial Hospital may move forward with a $96 million project to add more intensive care unit beds, a state board decided Tuesday — a plan that’s part of a larger growth strategy for the hospital.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve Northwestern’s application for the project, which includes the addition of 42 intensive care unit beds and a two-story connector between two pavilions, among other things. The new ICU beds will be in spaces that were previously doctors’ offices.
The additional beds are intended to help alleviate long waits in the hospital’s emergency department by getting patients into hospital beds quicker.
“A lack of ICU bed availability has caused significant backups in the emergency department, which has, in turn, led to excessive (emergency department) wait times, causing lower acuity patients to sometimes leave the emergency department without being seen,” said Dr. Rachel Cyrus, associate chief medical officer at Northwestern Memorial.
Now, about 10,000 patients a year leave the hospital’s emergency department without being seen, according to Northwestern’s application for the additional beds. The lack of enough ICU beds has also made it difficult for Northwestern to accept transfer patients from other hospitals, she said.
Northwestern Memorial needs more ICU beds partly because, as an academic medical center, Northwestern takes many especially ill, complex patients, Thomas McAfee, president of the hospital, told the board Tuesday.
Board member Gary Kaatz noted Tuesday that smaller, community hospitals often ask the board for permission to close or shrink their ICUs.
Kaatz asked McAfee if he envisions a future in which academic medical centers have ICUs but community hospitals do not. Many Illinois community hospitals have also closed their obstetric and pediatric units in recent years, partly due to competition from larger hospitals that focus on those areas of medicine.
“That’s a tough question,” McAfee said. “I think there’s always going to be a space for ICUs and other critical populations being cared for in the communities as well.” He added that he expects to continue to see telemedicine and teleconsults used to extend the expertise at academic medical centers into community hospitals.
The project to add more ICU beds is one of a number of expansion efforts Northwestern Memorial is planning in coming years.
Northwestern Memorial also recently gained approval from the state board to spend $56 million on design services for a potential new tower on its Streeterville campus. That tower would have more than 200 beds to help meet demand, according to the hospital’s application for that project.
The tower could open by 2031, if it’s approved by the state board. The ICU bed project the state board approved Tuesday “will be a critical bridge to address the high ICU occupancy before a new tower can be opened,” according to Northwestern’s application for the expansion.
“Together with the new tower that is in development, this project will provide the additional bed capacity that’s needed to accommodate current and future demand for our high acuity services,” Cyrus told the board.
Northwestern has not yet submitted a plan to the board for the actual construction of the tower. But it is also asking the board to approve plans to spend another $51 million demolishing a three-story basement on the site, in anticipation of building the tower.
In January, workers with SEIU Healthcare Illinois held a news conference criticizing the plan to add more ICU beds and demanding the hospital first beef up its emergency department staffing. The union represents about 1,700 workers at Northwestern Memorial, including dietary workers, housekeepers and patient care technicians, among others.
The union was in active negotiations with Northwestern over its contract at the time of the news conference.
There was no public record, however, of anyone submitting letters to the board opposing or supporting the project before Tuesday’s vote, and there was also no public comment Tuesday against the project.
Representatives of SEIU Healthcare Illinois did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.