Illinois Medicine

Illinois Medicine | 9 from a two-story space with a small footprint to the amazing six-story structure you see before you. The opening of the Specialty Care Building today fulfills a decades-long vision to provide our patients with an expanded, state- of-the-art destination to receive world-class specialty and surgical care." Dean Rosenblatt noted that the Pasquinelli and Panton families—who made generous gifts to name the Bruno & Sallie Pasquinelli Outpatient Surgery Center and the ophthalmology clinic's Panton Family Waiting Area—were a vital part of the collaborative process that brought the project to fruition. "We made a true commitment as partners in this aspirational project," he said. "The Pasquinelli family and the Panton family were, of course, generous with their funding, but they were even more generous in their spirit, their passion and their Looking at the Specialty Care Building today—with its soaring lobby, six floors of high-tech patient care space and world-class outpatient surgical center—it's hard to imagine the obstacles that UI Health's leadership faced in August 2020 when they broke ground for the 200,000-square-foot facility at 1009 S. Wood St. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony prior to the building's opening in 2022, University of Illinois College of Medicine Executive Dean Mark I. Rosenblatt, MD, PhD, MBA, MHA '19, reflected on the project's long road from vision to reality. "Under the umbrella of a unified UI Health, we have seen a renaissance in the relationship between our College of Medicine and the University of Illinois Hospital," he said. "This collaboration allowed us to dream big as we planned the programs that would be housed in the Specialty Care Building, which grew shared vision of what UI Health and our College can be." The Specialty Care Building features innovative technologies at every touchpoint to enhance the patient experience, as well as 182 clinic rooms where patients can receive the care they need for digestive and liver disorders; illnesses of the ears, nose and throat; transplants; urological issues; and eye diseases. The Bruno & Sallie Pasquinelli Outpatient Surgery Center—which houses an anesthesia clinic, eight operating rooms equipped with the latest surgical and robotic technologies, six procedure rooms and 24 pre- and post-procedure bays—is one of the first to offer precision single-port robotic surgery in an ambulatory setting. According to R.V. Paul Chan, MD, MSc, MBA, head of the Department of Ophthalmology, the opening of the state-of-the-art facility is a milestone for Chicago. "At Illinois Eye & Ear at UI Health, we not only care for patients who need comprehensive eye exams or routine eye care, but also patients who have complicated eye conditions such as cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, age- related macular degeneration and inherited retinal eye diseases," Chan says. "We have world- class ophthalmologists, and now we have a world-class facility to care for our community and to care for Chicago." Made possible by a transformative, $10 million gift from the Pasquinelli Family Foundation, the Bruno & Sallie Pasquinelli Outpatient Surgery Center in UI Health's new Specialty Care Building is one of the first outpatient surgical centers to offer precision single-port robotic surgeries on an ambulatory basis. Innovative Technologies at Every Touchpoint Against all odds, UI Health's new Specialty Care Building rose up in the heart of the Illinois Medical District at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite global supply chain disruptions and other pandemic-related challenges, the $194 million, technologically advanced facility opened in September 2022 to meet the growing need for specialty care and outpatient surgery in the Chicago area. P H O T O : D I A N E S M U T N Y

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