Oak Forest Hospital gets OK as outpatient center

-State Approves plan by Cook County despite protests-

After months of contentious debate, Cook County officials won approval from the state Tuesday to close Oak Forest Hospital and turn it into a regional outpatient center.

Patient advocates and union leaders who fought against the closure vowed to continue pressuring county officials, as well as suburban hospitals expected to pick up the patient load from Oak Forest, to provide quality care for the poor and uninsured.

Oak Forest will stop providing emergency room care Aug. 31, county officials said. It will continue to operate a 24 hour immediate care center as part of a concession by the county to win approval from the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. Patients who arrive at Oak Forest with critical needs will be taken to Sroger Hospital or nearby private Hospitals by ambulance, officials said.

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Hospitals woo private-practice PCPs into employed hospitalist roles

Hospitals are luring primary care physicians away from their private practices to instead work as employed physicians of hospitals, reports The Washington Post.

Health systems, including Inova Health in Northern Virginia, Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, and MedStar Health (including Montgomery General Hospital, Georgetown University Hospital, and Washington Hospital Center) in Maryland and Washington in recent years have increased efforts to actively recruit primary care physicians, reports The Washington Post.

For PCPs, hospital employment offers security and salaried pay, but it may change the way they practice medicine, with their patients turned over to the hospital.

"It's like the local coffee shop versus Starbucks," said one family medicine doctor whose Montgomery County group practice rejected a hospital system's offer in The Washington Post article.

For hospitals that now house internists and specialists in one building, hospitals gain patient referrals. Hospitals increasingly expand recruitment efforts, including hiring new graduates or paying for relocation fees.

In fact, less than a third of physicians will be in private practice by 2013, according to a study released last week by management consulting company Accenture Health. The study says that independent physicians employed by health systems will grow by an annual rate of 5 percent over three years.

Old Hospital Site might get VA Clinic

Federal officials and Silver Cross Hospital are "very close" to finalizing a deal that would bring a veteran clinic to the Silver Cross site, according to a hospital administrator.

Silver Cross will vacate 1200 Maple Road in February 2012 to move to a new complex in New Lenox. Federal officials have pushed to relocate its Joliet veterans clinic so it could provide more services to Will County's growing population of veterans.

The deal includes the federal government's purchasing of about 60,000 square feet of the 700,000-square-foot hospital. The veterans clinic would occupy the first two floors of the emergency unit on the complex's south side. The emergency unit is the newest part of the six-floor complex, which was built in 1919 and has been expanded about 10 times.

Joliet has one of six Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinics in the Chicago area, but officials said the facility, at 2000 Glenwood Avenue, is too small and cannot house many of the services that Will County's 45,000 veterans need. Often, veterans are sent to Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital near Maywood, which is about 40 miles from Joliet.

The ultimate goal for the Joliet clinic would be to make it a multipurpose veterans center and rehabilitation clinic beginning in 2012.

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County's plan for Oak Forest Hospital Rejected, Again

The Cook County health system's plan to transform Oak Forest Hospital into a regional outpatient clinic has again been rebuffed by the staff of the state's hospital planning board, but county officials plan to press ahead with an August 16 vote by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board on the latest version of their proposal.

The board's professional staff members have now recommended against the county plan three times this year, citing concerns that discontinuing hospital services would have an "adverse impact" on the south suburbs.

In May, the state hospital board followed its staff recommendation and denied the county's plan to turn the hospital into an outpatient clinic with primary care doctors, specialists and diagnostic testing.

The county is offering to operate a 24-hour urgent care center. The addition was a concession to patient advocates and unions that have opposed the county's plan, saying it will hurt health care for those who need it most.

The county hospital system wants to close the hospital as part of its plan to overhaul services countywide. The county had been set to close the hospital June 1. For the complete article and further information on the topic click here.

Women's Center to Open in New Health Facility

A new medical facility featuring a spa-like women's center will open in New Lenox next May. A groundbreaking ceremony was held last week for the Provena Medical Arts Pavilion, an almost 50,000-square-foot facility which will be located on U.S. Highway 30.

The medical center will hold offices for a variety of specialties and it will consist of an all-female staff, including one of the only female urologists in teh country, will be able to provide a battery of services in one place. Hospital officials mostly touted the women's center will provide a unique and one-stop-shopping model for women's health. The facility will even have a spa-like feel where patients will be able to receive Botox injections adn massage services at the facility.

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Mercy Hospital to Build Small Facility

Mercy Hospital is to build a smaller facility in response to comments by the state agency. Mercy Hospital and Centegra had both proposed similar projects - around 120 beds - in the McHenry market. However, the state commented that the area requires fewer beds than either of the proposed projects (approximately 70 beds). Now Mercy, which is looking to build at Three Oaks Road and Route 31, is proposing a smaller facility. The new plan calls for the construction of 70 beds in a facility that would be 90,000 sq ft. smaller than the original proposal. (The project is smaller than the 100-bed minimum required by the state for a new facility. Mercy wants the state to see the need for the hospital none the less.)

New Boss for Cook County Hospitals

According to the Chicago Tribune, sources say execs from N.Y. chosen over interim CEO. Officials are expected Friday to annouce the hiring of Dr. Ramanathan Raju, an executive vice president at the New York City Health and Hospital Corp.

Raju will replace former CEO William Foley, who left for a job in March with Vanguard Health Systems running hospitals in the Chciago area. Raju beats out Interim CEO Terry Mason for the job. For the entire article and more information click here.

Picking The Right Lease

When it's time for you to sign a new lease, make sure your landlord isn't going to take you for a ride and charge you way more than you should be paying. An article by Sibley Fleming from Medical Office Today, "Triple-Net Leases versus Full-Service Leases," explains that these two leases are completely different. An example the article says a doctor who switched from a full-service gross lease to a triple-net lease is now paying 40% more a month than he was prior. That doesn't sound like very much fun, does it? To learn more about the difference between the leases, click here.