By Tom Kertscher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Feb. 14--An Aurora Health Care board has recommended closing two aging hospitals in Burlington and Elkhorn and directed administrators to find a site for a new hospital to replace them.
Aurora officials cautioned Thursday that any closings or new construction would require approval from the heath care system's corporate board in Milwaukee.
Meanwhile, local officials said they want to make sure that area residents have input in the decision, and that access to quality care is not compromised.
The recommendation from Aurora's south region board was made after Aurora abandoned a planned multimillion-dollar renovation to the Burlington hospital and after officials made an assessment of the health care needs in the area.
The hospitals are Memorial Hospital of Burlington, which opened in 1924, and Aurora Lakeland Medical Center in Elkhorn, which opened in 1917. Aurora affiliated with Memorial in 1996 and with Lakeland in 1995.
Two elected officials who represent the area said a new hospital might be more cost efficient and might offer more sophisticated services than either of the existing hospitals.
'You've got to look ahead and I think that's what Aurora's doing,' said Racine County Supervisor Robin Vos of Burlington. 'We just want to be a part of the solution.'
State Sen. Robert Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie) said: 'We're all worried about the high cost of health care in southeastern Wisconsin. On the other hand, we want to make sure there's access to care. Aurora should inform the community of the reasons for this action. Community health care is important to everybody, so we should all have a say.'
Aurora has begun consulting elected officials but has not announced plans for seeking broad community input or a timeline for further actions. Consolidation would affect more than 1,100 employees at the two hospitals, thousands of patients and two communities that have been served by hometown hospitals for eight decades.
On its Web site, Aurora Health Care calls Aurora Lakeland 'state of the art.' And last fall, it began preliminary construction work to add a fourth floor to Memorial Hospital.
But Aurora abandoned the Memorial expansion after cost estimates -- originally $5.5 million -- nearly doubled to $9.9 million, said Andy Johnson, a spokesman for Aurora's south region.
'That's when everybody really started to say, let's look at the big picture,' he said.
The expansion costs and an assessment of future needs led Aurora's south region board on Jan. 21 to recommend building a new medical center that would serve Walworth County, western Racine County and western Kenosha County, Aurora officials said.
Administrators also were directed to seek a site for a new hospital and other uses for the Burlington and Elkhorn hospitals.
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(c) 2003, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
