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It was with mixed emotions that I received the announcement that Silver Cross Hospital was going to be moving. Like a high school graduate leaving home for college, there is the sadness of leaving and breaking with the past but the excitement of what the future will bring. I have known this building now since I was ten years old. My father, who was a physician, would many times bring me to the old hospital building while he was making his patient rounds. I currently send my patients there for hospitalizations, testing, and counseling.

Silver Cross Hospital has been good to Will County and Will County has been good to Silver Cross. But the Will County family is growing, and right now, it is growing fast. In step with that is the rapid growth of our community’s medical needs. We will need a medical center that can offer specialty care, the latest technology and the ability to grow now, and for the next 100 years.

The current location is not conducive to growth. Part of the landscape is rolling and ravine-like. There are flood control measures that run through a significant portion of the acreage. This limits the actual land that is usable. It even limits how much parking can be developed. The campus itself grew in the past 100 years into a hodgepodge of different buildings. The end result led to essential services such as Radiology being physically separated from the sickest patients in the hospital, those in the Emergency Room, Operating Rooms, and the Intensive Care Unit. I will miss this old building, but I look forward to a technologically superior full scope hospital soon.

Silver Cross is NOT a building NOR is it an address. Silver Cross Hospital is the sum of ideals and the people that carry them out. The ideals are:

• The assurance of timely care when one is ill.
• The commitment of excellence and compassion in patient care.
• The promise of comfort, when there is no hope, as the final journey begins.

Silver Cross is also the people who carry out these ideals. People like the caring nursing staff with which this institution is blessed. People like the volunteers, who with their smiles and altruistic service make this institution a better place to come to everyday. People who work behind the scenes in maintenance, custodial services, registration, Medical Staff, security, cafeteria services and the various diagnostic services. People like the physicians, such as my father in the past, and now myself, who have brought our patients to Silver Cross. The list goes on and on. The faces change, but the mission and the ideals remain the same. These have not changed in over 100 years and moving three miles down the road will not change them in 2011.

I do feel strongly about having an excellent hospital nearby. As an area resident, it comforts me to know that in an emergency, the ambulance would bring me to Silver Cross Hospital.

Dr. Daniel Co, MD