Two hospitals want new sites in McHenry County

Competing hospital systems this week submitted plans to build two new hospitals in McHenry County.

Centegra Health System and Mercy Health System, which both have existing hospitals in the county, each filed a Certificate of Need with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Board Wednesday.

Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said once the applications are deemed complete, the board will have 60 days to review the projects. The board will decide if two new hospitals are feasible in the community. Arnold said the two proposals were similar in scope and size, with both systems proposing a 128-bed facility.

Centegra plans to build a 360,000 square-foot hospital at Haligus and Reed roads named Centegra Hospital-Huntley. The cost of the project is estimated at $233 million.

“Additional services are needed in the Huntley community and Centegra is the health system best suited to provide these services,” Centegra Chief Executive Officer Michael Eesley said in a news release. “Although we brought outpatient and physician services to southern McHenry County, the area remains medically underserved.”

Mercy plans to build a 128-bed facility — with 120 medical surgical beds, 20 obstetrics beds, and eight intensive care unit beds. The hospital is proposed at Route 31 and Three Oaks Road in Crystal Lake.

A representative from Mercy could not be reached for comment Friday.

Although an initial request to build a 70-bed facility on the Three Oaks Road site was denied in 2003, Wisconsin-based Mercy gained approval the following year. But in 2005, a McHenry judge pulled the permit amid allegations of corruption against health facility and services board members.

Then-board Vice Chairman Stuart Levine was named in a multimillion dollar kickback scheme involving Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a fundraiser for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.