Blessing Hospital has filed a Certificate of Need (CON) with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board seeking permission to add three floors to Moorman Pavilion.

When Moorman Pavilion was built, it included a fourth floor that was not finished. The building was also designed to have two floors added to it. Blessing’s request to the State calls for finishing the empty fourth floor, and constructing and finishing the fifth and sixth floors. Doing that would allow Blessing to move 96 beds from its 1970 patient tower to create three floors of additional single bed rooms in Moorman Pavilion.

The additional rooms will not increase the number of patient beds at Blessing. It would, however, make the majority of medical-surgical rooms single bed rooms.

“At the time the Moorman Pavilion project started in 2012, our patient census could not justify the additional floors on the building,” said Maureen Kahn, RN, MSN, MHA, President/Chief Executive Officer, Blessing Health System and Blessing Hospital. “But over the past six years, patient demand has steadily increased and we feel the clinical case for expanding Moorman Pavilion can be made to the State.”

If the State approves the additional three floors of Moorman Pavilion, it would also provide the space needed for Blessing to eventually ask for permission to remodel all patient floors in its 1970 patient tower.

“The additional rooms in Moorman Pavilion would address growing demand for patient care,” Kahn stated. “Having them would provide the space to also make it possible to remodel patient rooms in Blessing’s 1970 patient tower in the near future and change the care environment completely at Blessing for generations to come.”

If approved by the State, Blessing estimates the Moorman Pavilion expansion would be completed by early 2021.