New start for Northwest Community Hospital
Northwest Community Hospital's new eight-story patient care addition, with its sparkling glass curtain wall and 200 private rooms, is the most visible sign of its five-year, Community Vision Campaign.
Started in 2006 with a goal of raising $35 million, the capital campaign already has raised $26 million, say hospital officials. It figures to raise another $500,000 Saturday night, as supporters gather for the hospital's 50th anniversary gala.
More than 700 guests are expected at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel - 100 more than expected - making it the largest event in the hospital's history, and clearly the most expensive.
Guests are paying $500 apiece and more than 30 corporate sponsors have contributed $10,000 each. The event features ABC 7 News anchor Ron Magers as emcee, and singer Ron Hawking.
"We were concerned, given this economy," says David Ungurean, Northwest Community Hospital Foundation vice president. "But it says so much about the role we play in the community when you see these kinds of numbers, and this kind of support."
Community is at the root of their mission, he adds. Even as the hospital positions itself as a national leader, with its cutting edge technology, clinical expertise and increasingly expansive facilities, its leaders have not lost sight of their neighborhood roots.
"We decided that rather than change our name," Ungurean says, "we'd change the perception of what people think of when they hear 'community hospital.'"
The patient care addition is a good example. Its striking glass exterior gives it an appearance of a high rise along the Golden Corridor. But inside its goals are much more personal and parochial.
The glass curtain wall works to provide more natural light, while designers have included open space in atriums and walkways, noise reduction, patient privacy and control over their environment.
They hope to add healing gardens, therapeutic art and sculpture, and an environmentally friendly "green" design, all in an attempt to encourage healing.
The first floor includes half of the newly expanded emergency department, which will open later this fall. When it does, the current ER will close for renovations, before its reopening in 2011 with an ER twice as large as it is now, and with state of the art technology.
Proceeds from Saturday night's gala will support the entire redevelopment plan, though most of the sponsors have indicated their contributions to benefit the patient care addition and the neonatal intensive care unit for premature and critically ill newborns.
"It's a very exciting time right now, and everyone's very proud," Ungurean says. "Yet, everything we're doing is making sure we have the best services possible, for the people who live and work in the Northwest suburbs."