Sarah Bush Lincoln Growth
SBL Willow Breeze Hospice House
Caring for a loved one at the end of their life can be difficult both physically and emotionally. Sarah Bush Lincoln helps those who are struggling by building the Willow Breeze Hospice House on its main campus. It offers a peaceful home-like residence where terminally ill people can receive short-term hospice care. Willow Breeze opened in January 2024.
A hospice house is ideal for patients and families who prefer that deaths occur outside of a hospital, nursing home or personal residence. Staff provides intensive pain management as needed, while also enabling patients and families to spend as much time together as they would like, without the noise and activity that’s common in other settings. Willow Breeze also provides respite care when primary at-home caregivers need a break from caring for terminally ill loved ones.
SBL Intensive Care and Education Center Expansion
In November 2023, Sarah Bush Lincoln added 20 new beds to expand the Intensive Care Unit to14 larger rooms and create a Progressive Care Unit adjacent to the ICU. A PCU is where patients receive care when they are not ill enough to be in the ICU, but they are not well enough to be on a traditional medical-surgical unit.
The project included the renovation of 21,500-square-feet of space on the north side of the Health Center and 37,389 square feet of new construction. Along with the expansion of the ICU/PCU, the project provides space on the ground floor to enlarge the Lumpkin Education Center to include a Multidisciplinary Training Center to be used by Lake Land College, Eastern Illinois University and the SBL Health Occupations program. Materials Management also benefitted from an expanded storage room.
The 58,000-square-foot and $30 million project took 18 months to complete.