Despite escalating consolidation of hospitals on Chicago’s North Side, the largest stand-alone inpatient facility left in the area is growing amid the shakeout.
Not only does Swedish Covenant Hospital have no plans to merge or sell to a larger player, the facility has been expanding and adding services as operating margins have improved in the last two years.
“We’ve been fortunate with the changes on the North Side,” said Mark Newton, president and chief executive at Swedish, located at North California and Foster avenues.
The addition of services and commitment to independence are in sharp contrast to Swedish’s rivals.
To the south, Advocate Ravenswood Medical Center is in the process of closing. And to the east, Edgewater Medical Center shut down in December in the wake of a massive fraud investigation and alleged mismanagement of the facility.
In all, a half dozen hospitals on the North Side have sold, closed or merged in the last two years, including Grant Hospital, which is finalizing its sale to for-profit Merit Health Systems of Denver.
But Swedish says it has been able to grow, picking up doctors and employees left behind after hospitals closed or eliminated services.
In the last two years, Swedish has added 75 physicians to a medical staff that now boasts 550 physicians. The company has also added 50 health-care workers from Ravenswood and 20 from Edgewater in the last six months.
Swedish also added the ability to perform open-heart surgery two years ago. That procedure was discontinued last year at Ravenswood when its parent, Oak Brook-based Advocate Health Care, consolidated its heart program on the North Side into Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
With the new physicians, Swedish’s average daily inpatient census jumped by 9 percent, to 250 in May from 230 in the same period last year. Meanwhile, outpatient registrations were up 10 percent, to 414 a day in May from 375 a day in the year-ago period.
Revenues and operating margins are projected to rise this year for the second year in a row after a loss in 2000. The hospital’s operating profit is projected to rise this year to more than $4 million on $160 million in revenue, compared with $2.7 million operating profit on $145 million in revenue in 2001.
The hospital’s projections for this year could be lowered depending on Medicaid spending reductions yet to be finalized in state budget talks.
A fatter bottom line gives Swedish the ability to plow more money into capital improvements.
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The hospital is expanding its Galter Life Center, a fitness and cardiac rehab facility, opening up 26 new inpatient beds and remodeling each floor of the main hospital. “Unit by unit, we are demolishing and rebuilding,” Newton said.
Asthma treatment: Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic treatment for bronchial asthma.
The suburban Morton Grove-based specialty pharmaceutical company expects to add $5 million in annual sales with U.S. approval of a metaproterenol sulfate inhalation solution, which asthma patients take through hand-held nebulizers, devices used to administer the drug.
The brand-name version of the asthma treatment is Alupent Inhalation Solution, sold by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc.
With the new product, Morton Grove Chief Executive Brian Tambi said he is projecting annual sales to increase 14 percent to $75 million. The privately-held company is owned by Tambi and William Blair Capital Partners of Chicago.