Provena Mercy offers tours of renovated rooms in Aurora

The second batch of 90 private, renovated patient rooms at Provena Mercy Medical Center in Aurora will open for tours Saturday.

An accompanying public picnic will feature health information booths, children’s activities and appearances by Mrs. Illinois and Kane County Cougars mascot Ozzie the Cougar.

The 218-square-foot rooms were outfitted with private bathrooms, flat screen TVs and an educational video system patients can access from their beds during an $11 million renovation project meant to maximize space, modernize the hospital and make patient rooms as conducive to healing as possible.

“Even as hospitals build newer, the rooms aren’t this big,” Provena spokeswoman Barbara Fallon said about the renovated spaces, which the public can tour from noon to 1 p.m. Saturday at the hospital at 1325 N. Highland Ave. “We retrofitted rooms that were originally for double occupancy into single occupancy.”

About half of the renovated rooms opened in January, but those 42 rooms have been holding two patients at a time while upgrades are made to the remaining 48. The remainder of the rooms now are finished and should be open for patient occupancy within the next couple months, Fallon said.

Renovated rooms are on the hospital’s third, fourth and fifth floors and will house patients in cardiac, orthopedic, neurological, oncology and surgical units.

The free picnic celebrating the completion of the renovations is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Those who attend can visit health booths staffed by hospital clinicians to learn about physical therapy, infant care, surgery, X-rays and portion sizes or to get a head and neck massage, blood pressure screening or body mass index measurement. Mrs. Illinois, Lisa Sonnenberg of Aurora, will give autographs and discuss her commitment to raising awareness about mental health, while Ozzie the Cougar will give away 200 autographed baseballs.