Aurora hospital latest for Grafton

Village wants health system to study effect on municipal services

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 5, 2007

By GUY BOULTON and LAWRENCE SUSSMAN

Grafton - Aurora Health Care announced last week that it plans to build a hospital in the village near the booming I-43/Highway 60 interchange.

The state's largest health care system also announced a deal to buy Advanced Healthcare, the area's largest physician group, employing about 250 doctors.

In Ozaukee and Washington counties, Advanced Healthcare has clinics in Grafton, Port Washington, Mequon, Germantown and Hubertus, according to the group's Web site.

The proposed hospital represents the latest development in a village that has seen significant commercial growth in the past few years.

Police Chief Charles Wenten said he was already looking at the possible effect on police services that the hospital - which is expected to have an emergency room - and the continuing commercial development will have on the department.

Grafton residents enjoy a good quality of life, Wenten said, "and that quality of life isn't going to be diminished due to an overtaxing of the village's resources."

Wenten expects "in the near future" to discuss with the Village Board's Public Safety Committee whether the department will need to add officers to handle the growth.

The Village Board, effective July 1, authorized Wenten to hire one additional officer, giving the department 22 officers.

Village President James Brunnquell said the village, as with any significant new development, will ask Aurora to do a comprehensive impact study showing how municipal services would be affected.

The study, Brunnquell said, should help village officials determine whether they are planning correctly, whether the village has the capacity to handle the new development and whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

Brunnquell added that he believes providing adequate health care facilities is a fundamental service that communities try to offer, "and this is a great opportunity for us to fill that need," he said.

For Grafton, Aurora's planned hospital would mean a new employer and 600 new employees, village officials said.

Advanced Healthcare's Cedar Creek Clinic has been in Grafton since 1983, Brunnquell said, and the new hospital will give the clinic "an opportunity for them to better serve their patients in the same community."

The new Aurora hospital, if built near the I-43/Highway 60 interchange as proposed, would be about five miles from Columbia St. Mary's Hospital Ozaukee - which is completing a $72 million expansion - at 13111 N. Port Washington Road in Mequon.

Dan Abendroth, Mequon Common Council president, said he doubted that the new hospital and the resulting competition would reduce medical care costs.

"I haven't seen them ever go down. Have you?

"From a provider standpoint, do we need more medical space?" Abendroth asked. "I don't know."

The Advanced Healthcare acquisition follows Aurora's pattern of entering new markets by buying or aligning with a large physician practice that can provide a new referral base for a hospital.

It also comes about one year after Aurora won approval to build a $189 million hospital in Summit, close to Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, in western Waukesha County.

The non-profit health care system did not disclose the purchase price for Advanced Healthcare or the projected cost of the 80- to 90-bed hospital in Grafton.

The combined cost, however, is conservatively estimated at $250 million by people in the health care industry.

Nick Turkal, a physician and Aurora's chief executive, said the two moves will increase competition and improve the quality of health care in the metropolitan market.

They are part of Aurora's longstanding goal of building an integrated health care system throughout eastern Wisconsin.

But competitors and others contend that building a hospital near Columbia St. Mary's Hospital Ozaukee will increase health care costs by creating unneeded capacity.