Another new building opens along metro-east’s ‘medical mile’

Patients in the metro-east will now have more options for outpatient and specialist care with the opening of a new medical office building in Shiloh.

“It’s a wonderful facility … and how beautiful it is. Really, what the building’s about is care. It’s about healing. It’s about hope,” said Mark Turner, president of Memorial Regional Health Services Inc., a non-profit organization jointly governed by Memorial and BJC HealthCare and the parent organization of Memorial Hospital and Memorial Hospital East.

The new $25 million facility is located at 1414 Cross St. on the 94-acre Memorial Hospital East campus near the intersection of Frank Scott Parkway and Cross Street.

“This new medical office building offers opportunity to expand services to meet the demand for quality healthcare in this region. Additionally, this location provides for specialists and services available through our affiliation with BJC Healthcare to be more accessible to residents throughout Southwest Illinois,” Turner added.

“We are two years into our marriage, and we are still in love,” Steve Lipstein, BJC Healthcare CEO, said of the Memorial/BJC partnership.

The three-story, 70,500-square-foot building is equipped with about 30 full-time medical providers, as well as some shared office spaces for specialists and sub-specialists on a part-time basis. Archimages of St. Louis, performed the architecture while Holland Construction Services, of Swansea, quarterbacked construction on the building.

“This is the first of many investments BJC hopes to make in this community expanding services and programs and bringing the very best of medicine to all of the people who live in the metro-east community,” Lipstein said.

Over 150 medical professionals, dignitaries and community members congregated at the facility Tuesday afternoon, marking the beginning of a new chapter for Memorial East medical campus for a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

“It’s a good day for Shiloh, for O’Fallon, for our region,” said Shiloh Mayor Jim Vernier. “(I’m) happy to see this facility opening. It’s going to offer a lot of great opportunities for both jobs and the medical field (with) people needing treatments.”

Walter Denton, O’Fallon city administrator, said the new facility will be good for both O’Fallon and Shiloh.

“It doesn’t matter if the hospital is in O’Fallon or in Shiloh — it benefits the whole community. We love both hospitals,” Denton said, referring to Memorial East and the new HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, which is set to open Nov. 4 about a mile down the road in O’Fallon.

“Our residents will come here and use this medical office building and see these doctors, and various hospitals, so it improves the health care of our whole area,” Denton said.

Services in the new medical office building will include: MMF orthopedic, OB/GYN, family medicine, vascular and pulmonary physicians, Lincoln Surgical Associates, Washington University School of Medicine pediatric specialists, the Harold and Dixie LePere Breast Health Center, physical therapy/rehab services, laboratory draw services and radiology.

“We’re also excited about expanding the rehab offering for the O’Fallon-Shiloh communities as we relocate our physical therapy and speech therapy location from (U.S.) Highway 50 here, and again, approximately doubling that square footage and service offering,” Turner said.

The advent of the new facility also allows for expanding the Harold and Dixie LePere Breast Health Center by “almost double in size from its current location” at the Belleville Memorial Hospital location, Turner said.

The possibility of a second $32.4 million medical office building in Shiloh is on the horizon.

Memorial Regional Health Services, Metro-East Services Memorial Group and BJC have filed a Certificate of Need application with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board, seeking approval of the building in August.

The state board is expected to review the application at its mid-November meeting, according to Anne Thomure of Memorial Regional Health Services.

If approved, a three-story, 66,400-square-foot medical office building would be constructed beginning in 2018 for completion expected in 2019.

“Hopefully, if the CON process approves, a sister building to this one will actually adjoin here immediately to our west,” Turner said.

This story was originally published October 10, 2017 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Another new building opens along metro-east’s ‘medical mile’."