By Steve Summers and Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Mayor Tom McNamara raised issue with Mercyhealth’s focus on issues with flooding during a public hearing held this week over its proposal to move 70 inpatient beds from its Rockton Avenue campus.
He said the health care company had not previously cited flooding as a reason to consolidate inpatient bed services, calling it a “smokescreen” to distract from its intentions to systematically remove services from the city’s west side.
McNamara made those comments during his weekly interview with Steve Summers on This Week in the Stateline the day after the hearing.
“In their press release stating that they were going to remove the 70-plus inpatient beds, not one word in that press release was about flooding,” McNamara said.
Related: City leaders, Mercyhealth trade jabs at public hearing
He also said that Mercyhealth’s application to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board included a narrative about reasons for its closure, “and not one word in their narrative was about flooding.”
“Yesterday was just all smokescreens and deception coming from Javon Bea,” McNamara said.
Bea, Mercyhealth’s CEO, placed blame on McNamara on Wednesday for not committing to build a $6 million box culvert that would curb issues with flooding at the Rockton Avenue campus. He said he planned to run the west-side campus “indefinitely,” and that the only thing that could force its closure was another serious flood like the one that caused $30 million in damages in June 2018.
Bea said the hospital’s $100.65 million investment in the Rockton Avenue campus in six years shows its commitment to the west side. That work has included radiology upgrades, an orthopedic suite, pharmacy upgrades, oncology services and a gastroenterology suite, among other renovations.
“We had originally committed, Mercyhealth did, to invest $50 million in the campus over 10 years. So we’ve more than doubled that commitment in just over six years,” Bea said Wednesday.
Bea said that since 2015 Mercy has hired 489 physicians in 74 different specialties, many of which whom could be recruited because of the new hospital on Riverside Boulevard. He said Mercyhealth is getting more referrals today from communities west of Rockford such as Freeport and Sterling than it did before the Riverside Boulevard campus was opened in January 2019.
“Why? Because we’ve got all the new specialists and doctors … that couldn’t be recruited because those facilities could not be in the old hospital,” he said after the public hearing.
McNamara mobilized residents and political leaders to speak against Mercyhealth’s plans to move inpatient services. More than 40 did so on Wednesday. About 10 people, all Mercyhealth employees, spoke in favor of the proposal.
“It was fairly telling to see that not a single person supported Mercy’s systematic reduction of services on the west side of Rockford except for people being paid by Mercyhealth system,” McNamara said.
Written comments are being taken until Feb. 23 and the state board is slated to vote on the proposal on March 15.
Other topics
Also in the interview, McNamara praised the Rockford Park District for its decision to move forward on renovations to Riverview Ice House and build an indoor equestrian center designed to help youth deal with trauma and mental health issues.
The district’s board of commissioners approved both measures Tuesday.
“Huge congratulations to the Rockford Park District,” he said. “They had an absolutely historic evening at their Park District board meeting.”
He also discussed Hard Rock’s latest steps, the appointment of Don Schreiner to a three-year term on the city’s Fire and Police Commission and the importance of Rockford Regional Restaurant Week.
“I’m trying to hit as many of them as I can,” McNamara said. “When you spend your dollars locally and you go to locally owned restaurants your dollar will go farther and it will stay in our community a lot longer.”
Listen to the full interview below: