Most favor hospital at Grafton hearing
But some say Ozaukee County has enough medical care
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 28, 2007
By LAWRENCE SUSSMAN
lsussman@journalsentinel.com
Grafton - A majority of the people who spoke Tuesday night at a
hearing on plans by Aurora Health Care to build a hospital and a medical
office building at the east end of Grafton said they favored the new
facility.
The Plan Commission is scheduled to recommend on Dec. 13 whether the
Aurora medical center should be built, and the Village Board could have
the final say on the center Dec. 17.
In September, Aurora officials said they planned to construct a
four-story medical center with 480,000 square feet, including 400,000
for the hospital and 80,000 for a medical office building.
The hospital is expected initially to include 89 single-bed patient
rooms and a cancer treatment center.
People at the hearing told a combined meeting of the Grafton Village
Board and Plan Commission that they liked having another choice for
hospital care in Ozaukee County, where the Columbia St.
 Mary's Hospital
Ozaukee campus in Mequon has been the sole hospital.
Norman L. Christensen of Grafton said he supported the Aurora complex
"because we need a second hospital in Ozaukee County . . . It will be
the only hospital with easy access to I-43."
 More than 100 people, some of them employees of Aurora and Advanced
Healthcare, attended the two-hour hearing. Aurora and Advanced
Healthcare merged earlier this year.
But some speakers, including Therese Pandl, executive vice president
and chief operating officer of Columbia St. Mary's, maintained that
having two hospitals less than five miles apart would be a wasteful
duplication of services.
"How many hospital beds are enough for a county?" Pandl asked, citing
a national standard that says about 1.5 hospital beds per thousand
residents should adequately serve an area.
Currently, Ozaukee County has about 2.2 hospital beds per 1,000
residents, she said. With the Aurora hospital and if Columbia St. Mary's
fills its new addition in Mequon, the county will have 4.1 beds per
1,000 residents.
But Robert Haveman, a professor emeritus of economics and public
affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital services
in Ozaukee County have been "a highly concentrated market."
After the hearing, Haveman said Aurora had hired a Madison economics
research firm, Christensen Associates, to do studies on the economics
issues involved with the proposed Grafton hospital.
Haveman said he was
working for the firm.
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