I’ve heard plenty of radio commercials for the ProCure proton therapy facility in Warrenville, Illinois and one thing gets me every time: the ad claims the center is “close to downtown Chicago.” A few thoughts about this:

1. The actual distance from Chicago to the facility is 30 miles. While the drive is relatively simple (Eisenhower to I-88 and then about 0.6 miles off the Winfield Road exit), this is not “close.” It probably wouldn’t even qualify as nearby. In no traffic, this drive would take at least 35-40 minutes and during the day would be longer. In my world, 10 miles or less would be close to downtown Chicago.

2. I’m not sure why the facility was built in Warrenville: the land is conveniently located near an interstate, close to Central DuPage Hospital (CDH), I assume the land was cheaper than in or near Chicago, and was able to be put up in “record time.” And there was competition: Northern Illinois University wanted to build a proton therapy facility in West Chicago and CDH filed a lawsuit against NIU that was withdrawn when a regulatory board gave the go ahead to the Warrenville facility.

3. One reason they might make this claim is because not too many people have heard of Warrenville. Going to Warrenville, a small community, doesn’t sound as good as going to somewhere “close to Chicago.”

4. Another reason they may have made this claim is that they want to win market share in the Chicago region. The ProCure facility has teamed with CDH which provides care to western DuPage County and has designs on a larger healthcare footprint (with a recent merger with Delnor Hospital) but may not be familiar to all of Chicagoland. Perhaps the claim of being close to Chicago is more about winning the PR battle against Chicago hospitals such as University of Chicago, Northwestern, Rush, and Loyola.