A $10 million capital grant recently announced by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will cover half the cost of a new $20 million emergency facility planned for Rush University Medical Center in Chicago that will allow for treatment of patients during potential bioterrorism attacks, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The facility--the McCormick Foundation Advanced Center for Emergency Response--which is scheduled to open in January 2012, will be able to treat roughly 250 patients during an attack, and around 190 patients a day as an addition to the emergency department at all other times.
Designed with input from military experts, the facility features single patient rooms, each with separate airflow to help keep contaminated air quarantined, according to the Tribune. Each room will look exactly alike to ensure easy access to things like medical equipment for emergency personnel. A decontamination area also will be created for arriving patients. Police officers, in addition to hospital employees, will be trained to use the equipment, as well.
"Back in the '70s, people were thinking of trauma centers," Dr. Dino Rumoro, chairman of the hospital's department of emergency medicine, told the newspaper. "These were places that responded to life-threatening, blunt or acute trauma. In the 2000s, we started seeing things like anthrax attacks, biological and chemical attacks."
The $10 million capital grant was part of a larger $31 billion capital plan--Illinois Jobs Now!--that ultimately aims to create 439,000 in-state jobs over the course of the next six years through road and school construction, among other infrastructure projects. The McCormick Foundation also is supplying $7.5 million for the hospital project.
"It is the duty of state government to provide for the health and safety of our residents here in Illinois," Quinn said in a statement. "The state-of-the-art emergency center at Rush University Medical Center is a great example of how investing in capital dollars creates jobs and improves our local communities."
To learn more:
- here's the Chicago Tribune article
- read this press release from the state's website