The University of Chicago Medicine is expanding its Crown Point facility to help meet the demand for care in Northwest Indiana.
An assessment of the market forecast over 110,000 patients using the Crown Point care center each year. Prior to Crown Point’s opening, about 15% of patients in Northwest Indiana were traveling outside of the Region for medical care. About one in five people in that group were visiting a UChicago Medicine facility in Chicago or the neighboring suburbs.
The expansion project will add new space and available medical specialties. The existing 130,000-square-foot building, which opened in April 2024, will undergo a 7,442-square-foot expansion that includes 18 new exam rooms and a new X-ray unit. The facility will gain an operating room, two procedure rooms and five pre/postsurgical bays.
“We’re very excited with how Northwest Indiana has embraced us in the community,” said Lauren Hull, chief administrative officer for Northwest Indiana, in a press release. “Because of this positive response, we’ve outpaced our growth, and we are a few years ahead of our original plan to build out space for additional services.”
Construction on the multispecialty clinic area will be completed early next year. Work on the ambulatory surgery center will finish in spring 2026. The expansion project will not impact the hospital’s operations or patient visits, as it is mostly taking place after hours.
UChicago Medicine Crown Point offers an ambulatory surgery center, a cancer center, a micro-hospital with eight inpatient beds and a 24-hour emergency department — staffed by many of the same physicians who provide care at UChicago Medicine’s campus on the South Side of Chicago. UChicago Medicine Crown Point also provides patients with access to clinical trials at UChicago Medicine's main campus in Chicago.
The number of specialties offered at Crown Point has nearly doubled since opening. Among the offerings are transplant specialists, gynecologic oncology, neurology, GI, pediatric specialists with onsite child life services, orthopaedic surgery, additional surgical specialties, a breast cancer team and four primary care providers.
“We’re honored to have been able to bring academic medicine to Crown Point and the broader Northwest Indiana region,” Krista Curell, UChicago executive vice president, chief operating officer and UChicago Medicine Crown Point president, said. “We will continue to pay attention to the needs of our patients and our neighbors in Northwest Indiana.”
