What do the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago have in common?
Satellites.
But unlike the NASA-launched versions that circle the Earth and flirt with celestial bodies, the hospital’s satellites are community clinics where pediatric specialists rendezvous with their patients on compassionate missions of healing.
Since Children’s Outpatient Services at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet opened in January, more than 75 children have been seen by 18 pediatricians, on a rotating basis, representing a dozen medical and surgical specialities, including neonatology, infectious disease, rheumatology, endocrinology, neurology and orthopedics. The clinic also offers telemedicine services (consultation by video hookup), currently for radiology and soon for cardiology, which will link pediatric cardiologists at Children’s Memorial with physicians and technicians at Silver Cross for live or “real-time” consultations on echocardiograms (imaging tests of the heart) and other diagnostic tests.
The joint-venture clinic offers patients and their families the best of both worlds–major medical center expertise and home-turf convenience.
“It’s world-class health care in your own back yard,” said Cathie Biga, vice president of patient care services at Silver Cross. “Until now, patients from Will, Grundy and even western DuPage Counties had to drive an hour and longer, sometimes weekly or biweekly, to see a Children’s specialist.”
Carolyn Berkowicz of Park Forest is a three-year veteran of frequent pilgrimages to Children’s Memorial. Of course, no amount of “driving hassles and battles” would stop her from getting Rebecca, 6, the care she needs, “and if we didn’t have her doctors coming to Silver Cross, we’d still go to Children’s,” Berkowicz said.
When Rebecca first came to Children’s Memorial in 1993, the tip of her left index finger had been amputated because of a rare condition that inflamed the blood vessels in her hands, causing severe infections. “Her fingers were being eaten away by the disease,” Berkowicz said.
After visits to several area physicians failed to improve her condition, Rebecca was treated with a battery of medications at Children’s Memorial and the problem was corrected.
“On the days we had an appointment, if I didn’t have a babysitter for my son (Andrew, now 4), I’d have to pack up toys, coloring books and a big food supply, because it was a whole-day affair,” Berkowicz recalled. “And it meant Rebecca would miss an entire day of school. Now I can go to Silver Cross and not take half my house with me, and still get Rebecca back to school after lunch.”
The clinic at Silver Cross, located in the professional building adjacent to the hospital, is the newest Children’s Memorial satellite. The first, a free-standing diagnostic, treatment and surgical center, opened in Westchester in 1991. Bowing to the cost-containment mandates of ’90s health care, succeeding clinics were set up in available space at Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview and Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. Like Silver Cross, they are linked with Children’s Memorial through the Northwestern Healthcare Network, a group of affiliated hospitals. Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey is targeted to be the site of the next Children’s Memorial clinic, although a date has not been announced.
The satellite-clinics strategy is driven by geographic and economic facts of life, said Patrick Magoon, vice president of strategic support services at Children’s Memorial. “Half the children we serve live outside the city of Chicago,” he explained. “About 40 percent are from the suburbs, and 10 percent come from out of state.” The clinics not only give the hospital a suburban gateway to its services, but offer a budget-friendly solution to its growing-pains problems.
The clinics would be little more than just a good idea that never got off the drawing board without the support of pediatricians and family practitioners on staff at the community hospital sites. Primary-care physician referrals are the life blood of specialty medicine, so Children’s Memorial courts their good will by being a team player.
“We don’t compete with them, we collaborate with them,” Magoon said.
And they return the favor of referrals in kind. “All our Silver Cross pediatricians are now listed in the Northwestern Healthcare Network, so if Children’s has a patient moving to this area, a referral can be made to a pediatrician here,” said Lockport pediatrician Dr. John Giroux, chairman of pediatrics at Silver Cross.
A spinoff benefit of the clinic is a program that will keep a Children’s Memorial pediatrician or neonatologist on duty at Silver Cross around the clock, starting July 1. The arrangement replaces a contract for similar coverage with a private physician group.
“It’s a real source of comfort to parents and our nursing and medical staff, knowing that if a child comes into the emergency room in serious condition, or if a staff physician needs a consult on a difficult case, we’ve got a Children’s Memorial specialist in-house at all times,” Biga said.
The only flaw in the new clinic is that it didn’t happen sooner, said Madonna Kestel, admitting nurse at Silver Cross, who made frequent trips to Children’s Memorial for six years with her daughter, Melissa, 17, from their Manhattan, Ill., home. “When I first heard that the pediatric specialists were going to come here, I thought, could it be possible that our daughter’s doctor would actually be available right here, right next door to the hospital?” When she checked the clinic’s medical staff roster and saw his name, “I was thrilled.”
Melissa was diagnosed with a forward slippage of the vertebrae in her spine at the age of 6. Her treatment included wearing a back brace for almost two years with the requisite numerous adjustment and follow-up visits. Today she plays basketball at Lincoln-Way High School in New Lenox. The satellite clinic makes her checkups a cinch.
“The other day I picked her up at school and we were on the road 15 minutes,” Kestel said. “She saw her doctor, we left and she went straight back to school. It used to be that (a visit to Children’s Memorial) meant I’d take a day off work and she’d miss all her classes, which was just one more stress on her.”
The best reason to welcome the Children’s Memorial satellite clinic at Silver Cross, Giroux said, is that it’s a win-win situation for all concerned–patients, their families, hospitals, physicians and the community.
“It provides specialists where there weren’t specialists before,” he said.
