{"id":907225,"date":"2026-11-05T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/907225\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:26:11","slug":"state-board-approves-lurie-childrens-hospital-in-downers-grove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/907225\/","title":{"rendered":"State board approves Lurie children’s hospital in Downers Grove"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a> can move forward with building a new, highly anticipated children\u2019s hospital<\/a> in Downers Grove, after a state board voted to approve Lurie\u2019s plan for the facility Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted unanimously Thursday to allow Lurie to proceed with building the facility \u2014 the last approval needed for the project.<\/p>\n

The $480 million hospital is planned to have 48 beds, six operating rooms, an emergency department and space for outpatient care. It will be located near the intersection<\/a> of I-355 and Butterfield Road and could start seeing patients in spring 2029.<\/p>\n

The new facility will be Lurie\u2019s first hospital with inpatient beds outside of its main location in Streeterville.<\/p>\n

Though the new 298,000-square-foot hospital will be significantly smaller than Lurie\u2019s hospital in Streeterville, it\u2019s expected to give people in the western suburbs an option for care that\u2019s closer to home.<\/p>\n

Now, about 47% of children in the western suburbs leave their communities if they need overnight hospital care, according to Lurie.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople walk past Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood on Feb. 8, 2024. (Eileen T. Meslar\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Nearly 20% of Lurie\u2019s inpatients now come from the west suburbs, Dr. Tom Shanley, Lurie\u2019s president and CEO, told the board Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind every one of those numbers is a child who needs care and a family that\u2019s navigating the added stress of travel, time away from work, time away from school and disruption of their daily life,\u201d Shanley said. \u201cWe believe we can, and frankly should, make that experience much better for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hospital will be for patients who are low-acuity, meaning patients who don\u2019t need the highest, most complex level of care, which is offered at Lurie\u2019s Chicago hospital. It would be ideal, for example, for children with respiratory illnesses who may need monitoring and extra oxygen, children who are dehydrated, and those who have infections that require antibiotics administered via an IV.<\/p>\n

The hospital will, however, have a helipad in case patients need to quickly be transferred via helicopter to Lurie\u2019s downtown hospital.<\/p>\n

The board also voted unanimously Thursday to allow Lurie to close its Westchester outpatient facility once the Downers Grove hospital is open. Lurie plans to relocate the services at that facility to the new children\u2019s hospital.<\/p>\n

Board members praised Lurie\u2019s plan for the new hospital Thursday, including Gary Kaatz, who called it \u201ca significant transformational intitaive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s going to be a lot of benefit for a lot of people,\u201d Kaatz said as he voted yes.<\/p>\n

Lurie\u2019s plans for the new hospital also drew support in recent months from a number of other individuals and organizations, including the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics, local pediatricians and families of children with medical issues who said having a hospital in Downers Grove will make their lives easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the quality of care has always been exceptional, the logistics can be exhausting,\u201d one Hinsdale mother wrote in a letter of support to the board, of taking her child to appointments in Streeterville and at other Lurie outpatient locations across the Chicago area. \u201cA relatively brief appointment can easily consume half a day or more when accounting for travel, traffic and time away from school and work.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Riverside father wrote that his family has had to make several emergency trips to Lurie downtown for his son. \u201cFortunately, we\u2019ve made it safely to Lurie Children\u2019s each time but the drive downtown in an emergent situation is always stressful, but we knew that the quality of care demanded it,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\"LurieLurie Children’s Hospital gained approval from a state board Thursday to move forward with plans to build a new children’s hospital in Downers Grove, rendered here. (LJC Design & Engineering and ZGF Architects)<\/p>\n

The new Downers Grove hospital should also help to take pressure off of Lurie\u2019s Streeterville hospital by serving some of the overnight patients that might normally stay in Streeterville, Lurie leaders said Thursday.<\/p>\n

While Lurie has added many medical and intensive care unit beds to its Streeterville hospital over the years, it will be out of room to add more beds to that location by the end of the decade, said Dr. Marcelo Malakooti, senior vice president and chief medical officer at Lurie.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will improve access for families while creating additional capacity at the Streeterville campus for those children who need the most complex and highly specialized care,\u201d Malakooti said.<\/p>\n

Approval of the new hospital comes as community hospitals across the Chicago area have been closing their pediatric inpatient units, often citing low numbers of patients. More procedures can now be done without an overnight hospital stay, and many patients in need of care go to large children\u2019s hospitals such as Lurie, UChicago Medicine Comer Children\u2019s Hospital and Advocate Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Pediatric inpatient units also are not typically big money makers for hospitals.<\/p>\n

In the Chicago area, 27 hospitals have shuttered their pediatric units since 2013, according to Lurie\u2019s application to the board.<\/p>\n

In fact, the same day that the board approved the new children\u2019s hospital, it also voted 8-1 to approve the closure of the pediatric unit<\/a> at St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet. Prime Healthcare, which bought the hospital<\/a> last year, said it wanted to close the unit because it had one or fewer patients each day, \u201cwhich raised concerns regarding the quality of care that could be provided,\u201d according to the hospital\u2019s application to the board to shutter the unit.<\/p>\n

St. Joseph said in April 2025 that it was temporarily suspending pediatric inpatient care<\/a>, drawing criticism at the time from the Illinois Nurses Association, which represents nurses at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Members of SEIU Healthcare Illinois also attended the meeting Thursday, with many criticizing hospital closures of services lines, including pediatric and labor and delivery units. St. Joseph in Joliet was also one of three Prime Illinois hospitals<\/a> to suspend labor and delivery services last month.<\/p>\n

The board\u2019s vote Thursday allows Prime to permanently close its pediatrics unit.<\/p>\n

If kids need inpatient or specialized care, St. Joseph has an agreement to transfer them to Endeavor Health Edward Hospital in Naperville, which is about 20 miles away. Inpatient pediatric services are also offered at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, about 9 miles away.<\/p>\n

Representatives of Prime and St. Joseph who attended the meeting Thursday said it\u2019s necessary to close the pediatric unit to ensure quality care and to help the hospital \u2014 which is still losing money \u2014 stay open for the long term.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason that healthcare is in crisis and hospitals are in crisis is everyone tried to do everything, and there\u2019s closures,\u201d Dr. Sunil Patel, regional chief medical officer for Prime Healthcare in Illinois, told the board. \u201cWe just need to focus on what we can do and what we can do well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital can move forward with building a new, highly anticipated children\u2019s hospital in Downers Grove, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[284546,379467,379466,97,252,253,171303,235555,235557],"class_list":["post-907225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-downers-grove","tag-dr-marcelo-malakooti","tag-dr-tom-shanley","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-lurie-childrens-hospital","tag-prime-healthcare","tag-saint-joseph-medical-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}