CRYSTAL LAKE – Now that Crystal Lake residents can expect a small hospital to be built in town in the next three years, the landscape of the region will begin changing in more ways than one.

The small influx of jobs and wider variety of health care options created when the new 13-bed Mercyhealth hospital opens in late 2020 is expected to offer more economic opportunities to both local patients and health care employees, experts said.

However, some medical experts are worried opening a new hospital contradicts the health care sector’s goal to keep patients out of the hospital.

“In the health care sector, we are trying harder and harder to move people away from the inpatient stays,” said Suzanne Hoban, executive director of McHenry County-based Family Health Partnership Clinic. “When we bring more hospital beds in, I wonder whether that is taking some away from potentially more prevention, stronger outpatient care.”

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board granted Mercyhealth's request June 20 to build the hospital at the corner of Three Oaks Road and Route 31 along with a multi-specialty medical clinic with 42 examination rooms that will connect with the new hospital.

Competitors argued the hospital would create an "unnecessary duplication of service" and oversaturate a region already struggling to fill hospital beds with patients. Centegra Health System announced the day after Mercy received approval it would be suspending inpatient services at its Woodstock hospital and moving them to hospitals in Huntley and McHenry.

Advocate Good Shepherd in Barrington is the only one of eight hospitals within 45 minutes of the Mercy's proposed location at target occupancy for medical-surgical and intensive care beds, according to review board data.

Mercy has previously outlined plans to reallocate 11 medical-surgical beds and two intensive care beds not in use from its Harvard hospital to fill the Crystal Lake hospital, where they would serve geriatric and low-income patients in the area, such as Medicaid recipients. The new hospital also aims to reach patients already using Mercy’s outpatient services.

“We still have 20,000 people at least without health insurance and getting them health care can be a very difficult thing, particularly with hospital stays [and] outpatient testing,” Hoban said. “If in fact that’s what they’re promising, my real hope is that they stick to that promise.”

The Crystal Lake Chamber of Commerce provided a letter of support for the proposed Mercy hospital in the interest of “economic development,” Chamber President Mary Margaret Maule said. She said a precedent for support was established when the Chamber supported Centegra’s hospital in Huntley, which opened in August 2016.

Both Mercy and Centegra have been members of the chamber for years.

“We project that our hospital and multi-specialty clinic will bring over 150 permanent health care jobs, including physician providers, nursing, clerical, dietary, housekeeping and professional support services as well as hundreds of jobs in construction and trade,” Mercyhealth President and CEO Javon Bea said.

Casey Mulligan, a University of Chicago economics professor who has written about the relationship between the economy and health care, said he is not familiar with Centegra or Mercyhealth specifically, but said that construction jobs created as a result of the a new hospital do not necessarily correlate as jobs for Crystal Lake residents.

“If I’m building a hospital, I’ll probably hire people who have built hospitals before,” Mulligan said.

Centegra remains opposed to Mercyhealth’s proposed hospital, as does competitor Advocate Health Care, which Mulligan noted likely stems from the competitive edge both stand to lose because of the new hospital.

“It’s great to be the only game in town,” Mulligan said. “You can treat the customers any way you want, you can treat the employees any way you want. Especially in an industry like health care, where maybe it’s not too easy [for employees] to work in another industry.”

Mulligan also said the presence of Mercy’s proposed new hospital in Crystal Lake would force higher expectations upon the operations of nearby competitors in terms of both quality and affordability. The same expectations also apply to employees, who have more employment options with the new hospital – even if the number is small.

“There’s only so much 13 beds can do to the competition landscape, but it does grow it by 13,” Mulligan said. “Just like in any other area, whether it’s schools or restaurants or car dealerships, you like to have a choice, as a customer and an employee.”

The Crystal Lake hospital was originally projected to open in November 2020, but Bea said Mercy is re-evaluating its options to potentially open sooner.

“The next step in the process is to finalize the facility design and site development,” Bea said. “We expect to open and begin caring for patients at our new facility in late 2020.”