Capital Campaign Overview
The Alexian Brothers Children's Hospital
The Alexian Brothers have launched a capital campaign to build the Alexian Brothers Children’s Hospital on the campus of St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates. This priority initiative is the first capital campaign since the System opened its doors in Elk Grove Village in 1966, and is dedicated to providing a high quality, easily accessible medical home for our community’s most vulnerable members – our children.
The Need for a Children’s Hospital
Why is such a facility and capability needed now? Increasingly, there is an urgent need to add to our capacity to care for children in the Northwestern Suburbs:
Increasing medical problems for children
- 23% of U.S. households have at least one child with special healthcare needs, due to a rising prevalence of chronic diseases and conditions such as diabetes, autism and ADHD. Children with chronic disease have three times the physician contacts and hospital admissions, and eight times the average length of stay in a hospital. In our community 19% of children are affected by obesity, more than 15% have asthma, and more than 8% have been diagnosed with a developmental or behavioral health disorder, such as autism.
Increase in premature births
- Nationwide, an increasing percentage of babies are being born prematurely and surviving. As a result, premature births increased 30% over the last 25 years. While this is wonderful news, more babies now need intensive care that is difficult for community hospitals to provide. The Northwest Suburbs is following the national trend: low weight births in our region have increased from 6.5% to 8% of live births.
Lack of local services
- Medical research is showing the importance of support and family contact to healing for children and infants. This is difficult to provide for critically ill children if they have to stay in a university hospital away from their families. Our families have to drive a minimum of 26 miles to the nearest children’s hospital, creating additional hardships for working families who have to take their children to appointments, or, worse, stay with them when they are hospitalized. This is compounded by the trend that most pediatric specialties, such as developmental pediatrics, pediatric surgery and pediatric gastroenterology, are centralized in Chicago, leaving few options for families living in the far northwestern suburbs. To compound the situation, the area’s pediatric services are actual decreasing. Two other local hospitals have reduced their pediatric beds, and a third has eliminated its pediatric service entirely. The Alexian Brothers Children’s Hospital will fill this mounting gap in much-needed services.
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