Published Feb. 4, 2010                                                        

Hospital expansion, helistop approved 5-1

By Pamela Lannom
plannom@thehinsdalean.com
 

   Adventist Hinsdale Hospital officials received village board approval Monday night to expand and modernize the facility and add a helistop.
   “These improvements will help keep Adventist Hinsdale Hospital at the cutting edge of medicine,” said David Crane, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer. “Our patients deserve this investment in their community hospital.”
   The project allows the hospital to convert all patient rooms to private ones, segregate patient and visitor traffic in separate corridors, update nursing units and surgical suites, add a new lobby and chapel, and offer convenient parking.
   Trustees voted 5-1 to amend the zoning code to allow helistops in the health services district, approve a special use permit for a helistop at the hospital and approve a major adjustment to the planned unit development and site plans and exterior appearance plans for the expansion. Trustee Kim Angelo voted no.
   “I’d just like to say at the outset I’m a fan of the hospital,” he said. “I think it’s a huge asset for the village. That’s not an issue with me. I love having it here. It’s a great asset.”
   Angelo proceeded to present statistics regarding medical helicopter crashes throughout the country in various periods from 2002 to 2008 and said there is about a 2 percent accident rate.
   “In other words, about one in every 50 helicopters in any given year is going to crash, probably with a guaranteed death toll,” he said. “These are not good odds and these are not acceptable odds as far as I’m concerned.”
   Other trustees spoke in favor of the project. Doug Geoga, who lives near the hospital and whose daughter was taken by helicopter from the Spinning Wheel landing site to the University of Chicago, said he is comforted by changes made to the zoning code text amendment at the zoning and public safety committee meeting.
   The amendment now includes a new section that gives the village board the right to revoke the special use permit the second year after adoption and every four years after that if the hospital has not satisfied the standards set forth in the permit, said Laura LaPlaca, chairman of the zoning and public safety committee.
   “Giving it a try in this manner seems like a reasonable step for a caring but cautious community,” Geoga said.
   Bob Saigh said he and other residents are anxious about the proposal and will be interested in reviewing data regarding helistop use in two years.
   “If the hospital should have 14 transports over the course of the year, what were the outcomes? What were the benefits if any to patients? What might have been ancillary benefits? That is very much on my mind as we consider this proposal.”
   The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved the hospital’s certificate of need application. The plan is to break ground in April, complete the demolition work in May and start construction in June. The project is scheduled to be finished in late 2011.