When the county’s first new I-69 interchange in years opens, motorists will still drive on the right side of the road, not the left. Drivers will stop, not go, when they reach the red light off the exit ramp. They will slow down, not speed up, when they see police cars with radar pointing out the windows.

It’s just the financing that seems backward.

Hoosiers are accustomed to seeing their taxes go to help new and expanding businesses, including highway enhancements. A big employer making a $500 million investment might even see the government spring for a new inter- state exchange, if it will help lure or secure a business.

But as Benjamin Lanka’s Tuesday story explained, when the new interchange is built at I-69 and Union Chapel Road, the business – a non-profit at that – will help the government.

In what appears to be an unprecedented expense, Parkview Health will pay for $10 million of the $20 million cost of the new interchange. The expenditure is a sign of the times in these days of government shortfalls and raises at least two significant questions as well:

Is Parkview buying an interchange that wouldn’t otherwise exist?

Probably not.

Planners have agreed the interstate needs a new exchange north of Dupont Road to serve the northeast part of the city. Planners had previously been looking at an interchange farther north, near Gump and Hursh roads. But the construction of the giant Parkview North campus changed the need. The Gump-Hursh interchange will still be in the plans, but another decade in the future.

Are roads an appropriate expenditure for a non-profit?

This question could be long debated, with good arguments on both sides. Health care, not road-building, is its mission. Yet Parkview is an unusual non-profit, considering its revenues. It doesn’t pay the kind of corporate and property taxes that its competitor Lutheran Health Network pays.

In any event, hospital officials determined it was a legitimate cost to help patients reach the hospital, offering a second entrance as an alternative to the congested Dupont Road, which will become much busier after the campus is completed.

Probably the most important issue is timing. If anything, the $10 million will buy Parkview a fast-track schedule, causing state transportation officials to move quickly on the project.

For the state, it may well be a no-lose situation: Better traffic flow without costing state government a dime, provided federal highway money covers the portion of the cost Parkview doesn’t. For motorists and Parkview patients, having the interchange open when or soon after the campus opens in 2012 will ease access and reduce congestion, a goal the hospital decided was worth the cost.