Mercy Health (IL) scales down plan for Crystal Lake hospital

Despite being rejected by identical 8-1 preliminary votes in June, the rival health systems that want to build new hospitals in Crystal Lake and Huntley hope they can persuade the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board this fall that one or both of their projects are needed. But board members could decide that the Huntley proposal would be too big to avoid robbing existing facilities such as Elgin's Sherman Hospital of their patients, while the Crystal Lake proposal would be too small to be efficient. One of the proposals has been changed considerably. Mercy Health System originally had wanted to build a $199 million, 128-bed hospital and physician clinic at Route 31 and Three Oaks Road in Crystal Lake Road. But Mercy officials recently withdrew that request and notified the health board's staff recently that they now hope to build a hospital with only 70 beds that would cost only $115 million.