Centegra’s Plan for Huntley Hospital Dates Back Years, Hopes to Bring Hospital to Reality with State Board’s Approval

Centegra Health System didn’t conceive the idea of a Huntley hospital overnight, said Susan Milford, Centegra Health System's Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Planning and Wellness Services. It came out of strategic planning the hospital was conducting back in 2004, she said.

Hospital planners looked where the growth in McHenry County was expected to increase and found the epicenter was Huntley where the population more than tripled in the last 10 years, according to U.S. Census data.

“We really there was a need for additional health care service,” based on the growth, she said.  “That’s when we bought the land.”

Centegra purchased 110 acres of land on Algonquin and Haligus Roads from a Huntley farmer. The idea was to someday build a full service hospital, Milford said. But, its first step was to recruit additional physicians to the area, she said.

In 2006, Centegra filed a Certificate of Need application with the Illinois Health and Services Review Board for an immediate care center. Centegra received permission to build its facility, completed in 2008, she said.

The immediate care center has a state of the art imaging center and a full service lab, she said. As part of its health care mission, Centegra later built Centegra Health Bridge Fitness to create a health and wellness campus, which did not require state approval.

“We currently have 5,000 members in the Health Bridge,” she said.

“As we were looking for the next step and who was using that campus, it was serving people throughout the growing areas of Huntley, Lake in the Hills, southern Algonquin and areas in northern Kane County, like Hampshire, Carpentersville and Dundee,” Milford said.

Centegra’s plan for a new hospital fell within what the state calls the A10 planning area, identified as an area in need of additional hospital bed space, she said.

Last December, Centegra filed its CON application.

Days later, Mercy filed its own CON application setting up the dueling proposals.