Construction Set to Begin for New Emergency Department at U. of C. Medicine

HYDE PARK, IL — A ceremonial groundbreaking will take place on Thursday to mark the start of a $43 million project to build a new emergency department at University of Chicago Medicine, The Chicago Tribune reports.

This project will turn part of a parking garage into a 29,017-square-feet high-level medical care center.

The facility will be equipped with four trauma resuscitation bays specifically for treating trauma patients, separate entrances for emergency medical service workers and patients who arrive on their own, private patient rooms, a bariatric room with lifts in the ceiling for treating morbidly obese patients, and an on-site biocontainment for patients who are exposed to biological dangers like Ebola, said The Chicago Tribune.

The emergency department is expected to open in Jan. 2018, and trauma services will most likely be offered in the early spring 2018.

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved the university's plans for the project in May. For years, activists fought for immediate, high-level medical care on Chicago's South Side. Trauma services have been absent from the South Side the past 25 years, since Michael Reese Hospital in Bronzeville closed in 1991.

"By opening a trauma center at the University of Chicago, we are going to not only add additional capacity to the entire (emergency medical services), trauma system, but we will be in a position to reduce transportation times for patients in need of immediate intervention, if not life-saving intervention," said University of Chicago Medical Center President Sharon O'Keefe to The Chicago Tribune.

Construction is expected to begin in the next month or so. The new center is directly across the Center for Care and Discovery at 5841 S. Maryland Ave.

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