I was born in '64 and I can only recall one hospital in Chicago being built new. Olympia Fields Osteopathic Hospital, which was just bought by a local Catholic Hospital and will most likely close.
Meanwhile Doctor’s Hospital closed and I can count at least 30 others that have closed since 1980.
So my question is why were there so many and where are these people going.
Will they build anymore. Seems like a lot of area SW Suburbs the NW side of Chicago proper are way underserved.
BTW I am refering to actual new locations for hospitals NOT mearly new buildings (like Northwestern Hospital built a new Hospital right by it’s old Hospital’s location. Or in Woodstock and Geneva both those cities have new hospitals that merely replaced old building. OK at locations further away but still esentially the same area)
Hospitals are extraordinarily expensive to construct and to operate.
The biggest need for them in cities like Chicago would be in area where they would have to paid for by the government, most likely County hospitals. Does Cook County want to pay or have the means to pay the several hundreds of millions of bucks that it will take to build one?
Los Angeles County needs to replace its oldest facility, County General, but it’s not easy to get: 1) a place to build it, 2) the money to pay for it, and 3) enough people agree to do it.
As for hospitals that have closed down, I would imagine that it is a factor of the changing nature of healthcare. A lot of us are in HMOs now. That means that a lot of us can only go to a certain hospital. Most of us don’t have the financial wherewithal or insurance that allows us to go to the hospital of our choice.
Most of this is a WAG actually. I do believe that suburban areas have several new hospitals. As people move out there, you have to build them.
My Wag is that they don’t necessarily build new one’s, they upgrade the Hell out of the old one’s and expand.
At least that’s the tendency here in Minneapolis/St.Paul.
Every hospital I can think of, Abbott, Childrens, Park Nicollet, have all expanded in relation to the community they serve.
Come to think of it, they recently, well 6-7 years ago, built a new hospital out in maplewood. Pretty fancy place.
Anyrate, I’ll stick with my original point. There’s enough hopitals around that they don’t need more.
In an incident I had years ago in the city, the paramedics asks me which hospital I wanted to go to. They mentioned three different ones that were near.
You know what, they built a new one in Arden Hills not long ago too. Hmm.
Yep. They sure do build new ones. They built one in my old home town. Brazosport Memorial Hospital (http://www.brazosportmemorial.com/) was built in the late '80s
Georgetown University Hospital is about 7 buildings all combined. One corridor passed “through” several of them, with cross-corridors leading to the main parts.
About 5 years ago they built a new hospital to replace the old Mary Hitchcock in Hanover. I was told that it was the first major all-new hospital constructed in the US in the past 20 years. It’s on a nice wooded “campus” and some sections of the hospital look like a shopping mall.
The hospital is the largest one in northern New England. The old hospital was on the Dartmouth campus, and was torn down as soon as the new one was opened. They had a caravan of patients moving through town to the new place as they went live.
They’re building a “new” hospital of sorts in Chicago. Having lived for two years either in or next to the Illinois Medical District, I’ve been watching them build the “New” Cook County Hospital for most of that time. There is an “Old” CCH which is largely crumbling and falling apart (you can see the “old” CCH in the film version of The Fugitive), and I believe that i heard that the plan now is to demolish the old Hospital once the new one is moved into. That would be a shame, because despite it’s poor upkeep, the Neo-classical revival facade is one of the most unique in the city. This new facility looks to about triple teh size of CCH and should make them atleast as big as the neighboring Rush-St. Lukes-Presbyterian behemoth, much of which (the Medical College and professional building) looks like 80’s-90’s vintage to me as well.
Here in South Florida, we have some new hospitals. The one closest to where I live is called “HealthPark Florida”, and is run by the Lee Memorial Health System. I’m pretty sure it was opened less than 15 years ago. The funny thing is, they built it so that if it wasn’t profitable as a hospital, it could be converted into a luxury hotel. So the atrium has fountains, glass elevators, a player piano…
I want to say that Good Samaritan in Downer’s Grove (suburb of Chicago) is “new” in that 27 years ago when I was born, it didn’t exist yet (so my mother had to go to Hinsdale Hospital). I don’t know how long after I was born that it was built though.
Our town is in a complete uproar right now over the possible building of a new hospital. (The uproar is because we don’t need one–at least not one like this–and the general public fails to understand that if it does get built, things are going to be worse!) So, yes, new hospitals do get built–or at least, they get talked about!
I’m in Canada, where the words “profitable” and “hospital” are gramatically incapable of being used in the same sentence. And they are planning to build a new “superhospital” in Montreal.
In the Glen Yards.
Which is right by an expressway.
And on polluted soil.
And they’re going to close three or four other hospitals to do it.
This is SUCH a good idea.
Thank you very much, Premier Lucien “we love health care - let’s cut another few hundred million so my minister of health can have a soundproof toilet installed in her office” Bouchard.
Here in Birmingham I believe we have at least three new hospital BUILDINGS going up. The University of Alabama - Birmingham is always building some new component of their research hospital. St. Vincent’s just opened a huge Women’s Health Center and has another large building going up. Brookwood Medical Center also is constructing something large, but it looks like a big portion of it is a parking deck.
I don’t know why a surplus of hospitals attracts even more hospital building. There must be at least 20 or so in the area now.
I helped pour concrete for the new Great River Medical Center in Burlington Iowa.
Then had my hip replaced in the old Burlington Medical Center which was the combination Mercy Hospital and Burlington Hospital.
When I had to have the new one replaced a month later it was at the New Hospital.
The new hospital is very nice but kind of sprawling. The Physical therapy girls have to walk long distances to rooms and push wheelchairs on carpet. They say it is a lot more work.
BTW I don’t remember the dollar amount but they say it is already paid for.It opened in April this year.
That’s often true here in the U.S. as well, at least if the hospital has an emergency department. A lot of U.S. hospitals have either closed or at least closed their emergency departments in recent years.
I’m most familiar with the L.A. County Hospital situation. Where parts of the hospital are of uncertain safety in an earthquake, but the hospital has stood since the depression and no one is quite sure where the money to build a replacement will come from.
Sanibelman- When I lived in Naples they had just finished Healthpark and just upgraded North Collier from a urgent care centre to a real hospital.
But as an aside these as I recall weren’t really new. North Collier was owned by Naples Community. (which by the way was SO profitable they had to build that fancy parking garage to spend money or the hospital was in danger of losing its not for profit status.) This was esentially why Healthpark was buildt.
But doesn’t AIM own Gulfcoast, SW Floriday regional, Eastpointe(?? Leighhigh acres?) as well as one in Englewood, Venice and Port Charlotte. Making it pretty much the same hospital.
Did they close down Punta Gorda’s hospital?
Anyway I would expect place like FL or NV with runaway population growth to build new hospitals but places in my area like Tinley Park / Orland Park, or even on Chgo’s NW side are devoid of hospitals while like 5 of them sit in one area.(West Loop or 3 in Humboldt Park)
Obviously it doesn’t take a genius to figure out putting a bunch of the same thing in the same area isn’t serving anybody.
Midwest University (the osteopaths) Sold their hospitals to Humana. Both with the promise they wouldn’t close. Boom they are closed now.