BLOOMINGTON - Generally healthy patients requiring an overnight stay following surgery may have an alternative besides the hospital beginning this summer.

BroMenn Comfort & Care Suites should open by June in The Center for Outpatient Medicine (T-COM) building, 2502 E. Empire St., said T-COM Administrator Bryan Zowin.

About 2,900 square feet of the northeast side of the T-COM building is being renovated and equipped for the $1.2 million post-surgical, recovery care center. The space had been used for physical therapy for McLean County Orthopedics, said Sarah Gardner, T-COM business director.

Recovery care centers are increasing in popularity because they offer more privacy and a homier atmosphere at less cost than hospitals, Zowin said. BroMenn's was the seventh recovery care center approved by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board and the first in McLean County, said Sonja Reece, BroMenn Healthcare director of government affairs and property management. BroMenn is partial owner of T-COM and has leased the space for the center.

Recovery care centers are for generally healthy patients who need post-surgical pain control and observation for no more than 72 hours, Gardner said. Patients are pre-screened, must be approved for the center and must have had their surgery at T-COM.

Surgeries will include some spine cases, hysterectomy, gallbladder and extensive sinus surgery, Reece said. Medicare is not yet covering patient costs at recovery care centers, Zowin said.

BroMenn will hire registered nurses and a receptionist whose hours will total the equivalent of about six full-time employees, Gardner said.

Gardner anticipates work being done in early April but Illinois Department of Public Health inspections of the design, policies and procedures, and staffing of the center, will take several weeks more.

The center includes a lobby, three private patient rooms, a multipurpose room for family members, a nurses' station and kitchen.

Asked to comment on the BroMenn center, Chad Boore, vice president of medical network services for OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, said the Comfort & Care Suites seem like a natural evolution in care. "This is a new concept without any significant amount of outcome evidence. We are interested, though, in learning how their new service progresses."