Chicago Tribune (CT) - THURSDAY, June 12, 1997
Evan Osnos, Tribune Staff Writer.

Those who cannot afford the city's more expensive treatment facilities crowd into Cook County Hospital's hot, cramped waiting rooms--spaces usually borrowed for the day from other hospital purposes--to see doctors and counselors, in some cases, as often as once a week.

For doctors and administrators at County Hospital the struggle is to care for 2,000 of the city's poorest HIV and AIDS patients, three times as many patients as their current facilities can handle adequately. Doctors say they resort to convening counseling sessions and consultations in hallways and alcoves.

But that will change.

In the fall of 1998 on what is a parking lot at Damen Avenue and Harrison Street, County Hospital and nearby Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center will together open the CORE Center, a $25 million, 60,000-square-foot outpatient facility devoted to the care and research of HIV, AIDS and other communicable diseases.

It is a project that supporters at all levels of government have hailed as a model for the future of infectious-disease care, both in its emphasis on outpatient treatment and its partnership between public and private institutions.

The center will combine the HIV-related resources of County and Rush Hospitals to offer counseling services, expanded diagnostic facilities and other outpatient treatments that now often require hospitalization.

The hospitals will share the facility's operating costs. Project organizers estimate that it will save $6 million a year in hospital stays.

"Every day, we see reminders that this battle is far from over and that we can not be complacent," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala at a ground-breaking Wednesday for the center. "Not when there are about 23,000 people infected with HIV in Chicago alone--and over half of them don't even know it. Not when over 85 percent of those infected in Cook County are people of color. And not when the cases of AIDS increased by 6 percent in Cook County in 1995."

Shalala was joined by Mayor Richard Daley, County Board President John Stroger, project sponsors and representatives from the hospitals.

Funding for the project has come from public and private sources. Federal and state governments have provided $11.8 million and $5 million, respectively. Another $8 million has come from grants, corporate and private contributions.

County Hospital will move all of its HIV-related outpatient resources to the new facility and will increase the number of visits it can handle, organizers said.

The building will have a screening clinic, a training center, educational programs and a research laboratory.

HIV/AIDS activist Rae Lewis Thornton said the center will offer patients dignity in the overworked public health-care system. "The clinic should be somewhere people go to get a hug, to get emotional support as well," she said. "Now we will have that place."

CAPTION: PHOTO: Mayor Richard Daley removes his hard hat after participating in Wednesday's ground-breaking for the CORE Center. Tribune photo by Carl Wagner.

DE HOSPITAL; OPENING; DISEASE

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