OSF HealthCare Opens Second Cardiac Catheterization Lab in Peoria Amid Rising Demand

OSF HealthCare has opened a second cardiac catheterization lab at its Peoria campus, an $8 million addition the health system says was necessary to keep pace with rising demand for cardiac procedures as central Illinois's population ages.

The single existing catheterization lab had increasingly become a scheduling bottleneck, hospital officials said, with elective procedures sometimes delayed by weeks and emergency cardiac cases occasionally requiring transfer to Chicago-area hospitals when the lab was in use for another patient.

"We were in a position where a single lab was trying to serve both our scheduled procedures and any emergency heart attack that came through our doors, and that's simply not sustainable for a region with an aging population," said OSF's chief of cardiology. "Having a second lab means we're not choosing between a scheduled patient and an emergency."

The new lab is equipped to perform both diagnostic catheterizations and interventional procedures such as stent placements, giving the hospital full redundancy for its cardiac catheterization services for the first time. OSF HealthCare said the addition will also reduce the number of cardiac patients transferred to hospitals outside the region for procedures the hospital can now perform on-site.

Central Illinois has an older median population than much of the rest of the state, and hospital administrators said the cardiac lab expansion is part of a broader effort to build out specialty capacity to match that demographic reality.