‘It’s been a long 435 days,’ officials excited to reopen Peru hospital Sunday

If you have to use the emergency room Sunday – hopefully, you won’t – don’t expect it to look much like the Peru hospital of yore. OSF HealthCare did more than slap on fresh paint.

Workers have torn down walls and reconfigured the emergency department to work like a “racetrack,” as one OSF official put it, to facilitate the movement of patients.

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AJ Querciagrossa, CEO of OSF HealthCare's western region, and Heather Bomstad, chief nursing officer, show the emergency rooms during tour a tour Friday, April 5, 2024, at OSF St. Elizabeth-Peru. ( Tom Sistak For Shaw Media)

While touring the hospital Friday, Peru Mayor Ken Kolowski said the redesign was so radically different from what he remembered he was momentarily disoriented.

“It’s unbelievable,” Kolowski said. “If I woke up in here on a stretcher, I wouldn’t know where I was.”

“Sunday will have been 435 days without a hospital and it’s been a long 435 days’

—  Ken Kolowski

“It’s a good day,” Kolowski said. “Sunday will have been 435 days without a hospital and it’s been a long 435 days. And I won’t forget that number for as long as I live.”

The most striking change in the emergency department is the circular design, which was implemented to whisk patients seamlessly from triage to diagnostics to telehealth centers. Yes, telehealth: There’s a good chance your ER doctor will visit you virtually to direct your first round of care.

“We’re going to be piloting that method here as well in Ottawa and Streator,” said Heather Bomstad, chief nursing officer. “We’ll have a board-certified emergency physician on the camera who can interview the patient (and) get the ball rolling.”

“We can’t do healthcare the same way we’ve been doing it,” said Dawn Trompeter, president of OSF St. Elizabeth Medical Center. “There are not enough human resources to do that going forward. We know there are not enough slots in schools and so forth.”

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, was on hand for a Friday afternoon tour of the Peru hospital and she thought incorporating telemedicine into the ER a creative solution to a growing problem.

“They’ll have an ER doctor use telehealth to first assess where you’re at and then help to move that process along in the ER,” Rezin said, “because one of the big concerns we have throughout the state is the long ER rates before you’re seen by a doctor – sometimes up to eight hours.”

Many more changes are on the way to the former Illinois Valley Community Hospital. Trompeter estimated about a quarter of the physical plant will be up and running Sunday as phase 1 commences. Phase 1 includes emergency services and limited inpatient beds plus diagnostic imaging, laboratory, pharmacy, EKG and respiratory.

“And that’s just bringing our emergency room back on track,” said AJ Querciagrossa, CEO of the network’s western region.

Next up is increasing the inpatient beds from two to 12 and opening the hospital to outpatient services. That requires regulatory approval and Trompeter said OSF won’t get it until after an unannounced visit that clears the way for Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Not every corner of the former IVCH was torn down and rebuilt. The former intensive care unit is now a “med-surgical unit,” but otherwise looks substantially unchanged. The chapel is being redecorated but it, and the adjoining pastoral care office, remain in place.

OSF attacked the overall floor plan not only to update the hospital but also to usher in a host of changes to keep up with advances in healthcare and changes in how it’s delivered.

“You’re going to see how we’re thinking about the healthcare of the future,” Querciagrossa said. “You’re going to hear about concepts we’re going to be testing here in Peru in Ottawa. Those are the things to come.”

Rezin and state Rep. Lance Yednock, D-Ottawa, extended their thanks to the governor’s office for fast-tracking the regulatory approval for OSF.

“A lot of updates have been done since the last time I was here,” Yednock said. “They have put in a lot of work in four months’ time. They’re really trying to make it a beautiful, wonderful, functional facility.”