The plan for a new ER at Rush Oak Park Hospital has been a long time coming. Visitors to the existing emergency room will attest that the service is first rate, will express amazement at how every nook and cranny has been converted to useable space, and will be delighted to know that it will soon be fully replaced by a more modern, spacious and private facility.
The need for a new ER has been plain for years. And the steadily increasing patient load made a new facility both possible and necessary. Built in 1969 with a forecast of 15,000 annual patient visits, the same slightly updated and ingeniously expanded ER saw 37,000 visits in the past year.
But deciding to spend $30 million for an ER did not come lightly, even for a major medical provider such as Rush.
The decision was made easier by this hospital’s gradual but determined turnaround in the years since Rush became involved in its management, even as sponsorship remained for a long time with a Catholic religious order. Capable and steady management, in the person of Bruce Elegant, has helmed this hospital for many years. His leadership and a strategy to ever more fully integrate Rush Oak Park with the butterfly-shaped mothership just down the Ike has paid off.
More recently, the ability of Rush to take on sole ownership of the hospital has cleared the way for this notable investment.
A long and rocky relationship between the hospital and neighbors will be further repaired as this new facility replaces an existing and no-longer-used building on the campus. That it will front the main artery of Madison and not increase intense use in the residential neighborhood to the south and east is a significant plus.