Emergency center coming to Yorkville
Addition to Rush-Copley health care center 'a natural progression'

February 3, 2010
By Jack McCarthy, Special to the Tribune

It now takes about a 15- to 20-minute drive from downtown Yorkville to reach an emergency room at the area's nearest hospitals. And in a medical emergency, that may be too long. But Kendall County and southwest Kane County residents should have quicker access to emergency care by mid-2012 when Aurora-based Rush-Copley adds a 24-hour emergency room alongside its health care center in Yorkville.

The closest ER's now are in Sandwich and Aurora. Because the Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora handles so many patients from the Yorkville region, "it seemed a natural progression to want to build the facility out in that area," said Nancy Wilson, Rush-Copley's vice president of clinical services.

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board recently approved Rush-Copley's request to build the $6.3 million, 6,414-square-foot Freestanding Emergency Center in Yorkville. It will be located on 45 acres near the Kendall County government offices and courts on Yorkville's west side, on the site of the current health care center.

"Yorkville (residents have) been asking for health care to be brought directly to the community for quite some time," said Wilson, who oversees the Kendall County campus as well as a variety of departments at the flagship Aurora medical center. "We approached Yorkville with a comprehensive plan a couple of years ago. Phase 1 was to include an outpatient facility that we constructed and we're now operating. Phase 2 was always to include an application for a freestanding emergency center."

The emergency center would be staffed by certified emergency-trained doctors and nurses and be equipped to handle non-life-threatening injuries. For more serious problems, patients would still be taken to an emergency room affiliated with a full-service hospital.

Chief Mike Hitzemann of the Bristol-Kendall Fire Protection District said about 80 percent of his emergency transports are to Rush-Copley in Aurora. And, he said, that's not likely to change since many emergency patients may require hospitalization. "It's not going to have a huge impact on us," he said. "Our paramedics aren't likely to transport any advanced life-support patients (to the new facility). They may let us bring BLS (basic life support) — the broken arms, the scrapes. But it's a step closer to what we need: a full-service hospital."

The 58,000-square-foot Yorkville Healthcare Center opened in 2008. The emergency center was part of a planned unit development approved by Yorkville officials, so Rush-Copley will only need building permits, speeding the construction process. The current center, open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, offers on-site physicians, labs and other medical services, including mammography, ultrasounds, MRIs and CT scans.

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