UChicago Medicine Crown Point announces expansion project
After less than two years in operation, the University of Chicago Medicine Crown Point multispecialty facility is expanding to help meet the high demand for care in Northwest Indiana.
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 — as well as an additional 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. “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, and work on the ambulatory surgery center will finish in the spring of 2026. The expansion project will not impact the hospital’s operations or patient visits, since it is mostly taking place after hours.
Growing list of specialties, experts
UChicago Medicine Crown Point is the health system’s largest offsite facility. It offers an ambulatory surgery center, a comprehensive cancer center, a micro-hospital with eight inpatient beds, and a 24-hour emergency department — all staffed by many of the same faculty physicians who provide care at UChicago Medicine’s flagship campus on the South Side of 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 multidisciplinary breast cancer team, as well as four primary care providers.
UChicago Medicine Crown Point is one of only two comprehensive cancer centers in Indiana. It not only offers Northwest Indiana residents infusion therapy, radiation oncology, imaging and medical and surgical oncology, but it also provides patients with access to the hundreds of clinical trials at UChicago Medicine's main campus in Chicago.
More specialties will be added after the expansion, including full-time cardiologists.
“We’re honored to have been able to bring academic medicine to Crown Point and the broader Northwest Indiana region,” said Krista Curell, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of the UChicago Health System, and President of UChicago Medicine Crown Point. “We will continue to pay attention to the needs of our patients and our neighbors in Northwest Indiana.”
Close-to-home community partner
Thanks to the facility’s location, many Northwest Indiana patients report saving dozens of hours of driving to medical appointments because they are now able to receive care closer to home.
The need is great: An assessment of the market forecast more than 110,000 patients using the Crown Point care center each year.
Prior to Crown Point’s grand opening, roughly 15% of patients in Northwest Indiana were traveling outside of the region for medical care, and about one in five people of that group were visiting a UChicago Medicine facility in Chicago or the neighboring suburbs.
In addition to providing medical care, UChicago Medicine has made significant efforts to become an integral part of the community by working with local nonprofits such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana and the Northwest Indiana Food Bank to supporting Valparaiso University Athletics and the Lake County Corn Dogs baseball team.