Aurora Health Care's new 110-bed Aurora Medical Center in the town of Summit, WI, will include coordinated care featuring an integrated electronic health record.
Opening on March 1, the medical center will offer primary care services, such as family medicine, internal medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics, and women's health, under one roof, and in a "prime location" off Wisconsin's Interstate 94 and Highway 67, says Fran Finley, chief administrative officer for Aurora Medical Center. Specialty services will include those for oncology, cardiovascular, neurosciences, emergency, and opthalmology, to name just a few.
"Certainly, it's a convenience issue," Finley says. "You see your physician, the physician requires a diagnostic service and it's located an elevator trip down and is conveniently located in relation to your X-ray department or laboratory department."
This fully-integrated approach will also benefit the Aurora physicians who have practices in the medical clinic, Finley says.
"Say they are an obstetrician: they walk next door to the labor delivery unit for delivering the baby," Finley says. "It's ease of access and convenience for the provider or caregiver as well as the patient."
A key to the comprehensive care will be electronic health records.
"That is probably one of the best things that will be implemented here: The ability for us to track the patient across the whole continuum, from doctor office to hospital to home health to pharmacy," Finley says. "Certainly, from a patient perspective that is a huge benefit."
The opening of the medical center will integrate the Summit campus with the Aurora Wilkinson Medical Clinic, which opened in October. The new medical center's site is in a growth area of the state, says Finley. Patients in Wisconsin's Waukesha and Jefferson counties have access to Aurora's large physician practice, but there currently are no hospitals.
"With the significant number of patients that we have and the number of lives we touch here, it was a convenient location," Finley says. "There was no hospital close by, they had to go to Milwaukee."
Once the medical center is complete, the entire facility will be 800,000 square feet, 250,000 of which is the physician practice that is already up and running.
The hospital will begin to be furnished in December, when medical devices to support surgeries, diagnostics, wound care, and rehabilitation are expected to arrive at the facility. The equipment will then be installed, and each of the devices will undergo testing to obtain certification.
The next several weeks will consist of finding the 500-700 staff members for the facility, Finley says. She estimates 20% of the positions will be filled by people who already work for Aurora and happen to live in the surrounding areas. The vast majority of the staff will come from Wisconsin, providing a boost to the local economy as well.
Finley says planning for the new medical center began 10 years ago, and its development and growth will be an ongoing process. While the medical center will only be licensed for 110 beds at first, the intent for it is to grow to become a regional center because of its location in the "growth quarter" on Interstate 94—between the cities of Milwaukee and Madison, Finley says.
"The hospital is not built for March 1, the hospital is built for five years, for 10 years, for 20 years from now and it has the capacity to expand to at least double, and a little bit more, from what we will open with in March," Finley says.