Silver Cross in the News

Public hits on emotional side of move
The Herald News - January 24, 2008
By Patrick Ferrell, Staff Writer

NEW LENOX—The second and final public hearing into Silver Cross’ plan to build a $400 million replacement hospital focused in large part on the emotional side of health care.

A handful of speakers at Wednesday’s hearing at New Lenox Village Hall spoke of harrowing situations over the past few years that required their family to seek medical treatment in Chicago.

Ray Tuminello, a New Lenox village trustee, recalled when his daughter was airlifted from Silver Cross to Children’s Memorial Hospital in 2005 because Silver Cross couldn’t provide the treatment she needed.

“My wife and I sat in the parking lot, our hearts pounding, and watched her take off,” Tuminello said, his daughter by his side.

Silver Cross’ plan for a replacement hospital at U.S. 6 and Clinton Street—just above three miles from its location on Joliet’s East Side—will include an expanded relationship with the children’s hospital, lessening the need for such trips to Chicago, Tuminello said.

“This will allow the children to be treated closer to home,” Tuminello said. “No longer will we need to drive to Chicago to get the treatment these kids deserve.”

Currently, Silver Cross cannot offer a better relationship with the Chicago hospital because of space and economic restraints at its current facility.

Public speaks

Sixty people spoke at Wednesday’s hearing, providing testimony that will be forwarded to the state’s health facilities planning board, a board that signs off on new health care building projects to ensure areas don’t become saturated with hospitals and other facilities. The board is expected to consider the Silver Cross plan at its meeting May 20 and 21.

Of the five dozen people who spoke, 10 offered comments against the plan to move Silver Cross.

Most who spoke in opposition Wednesday were either Joliet officials or those with connection to Joliet’s East Side.

David Chandler, the senior business analyst with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, said the area around the current hospital has the highest concentration of low-income residents in the county. Some 10 percent don’t own a car, and a third don’t have enough cars for each adult in their household, he said. Therefore, he said, if the hospital were further, residents would have a more difficult time reaching it.

Also, the East Side, already facing the loss of a state prison and a massive steel mill, can’t afford to redevelop the site that would be left open.

“If Silver Cross leaves, we’ve got three large swaths of land left vacant,” Chandler said.

Officials testify

Much of Wednesday’s testimony came from political and business leaders in the area that would most benefit from the replacement hospital. Many of the remarks were solicited over the past couple weeks by Silver Cross itself.

Mayors from New Lenox, Lockport, Homer Glen and Frankfort spoke in favor of the plan. Manhattan Mayor Bill Borgo, a 52-year-old who was diagnosed at an early age with cystic fibrosis, talked about how his family had to seek medical care out of the county for him.

If the replacement hospital moves forward, “it’s very likely that a child can be diagnosed with something because of the expanded relationship with Children’s Memorial Hospital,” Borgo said. “That child could grow up to become mayor, senator or a business leader.”

Several fire department officials, including those from New Lenox, East Joliet, Homer Township and Frankfort, also spoke in favor of the plan.

The New Lenox Township supervisor provided testimony in support of the hospital, as did officials from the New Lenox Chamber of Commerce and New Lenox School District.

New Lenox Village Administrator Russ Loebe told his emotional story of his son’s 1987 trip to Chicago to treat a severe viral infection when he was weeks old.

“Future parents and future grandparents will not have to endure the superbly horrendous experience we experienced when we drove to Chicago in 1987,” Loebe said.