Christ Medical Center Plays Key Role in Increased Charity Care, Services
Oak Lawn, Ill. – Thanks to such programs as Live…from the Heart and a popular series of free educational and exercise sessions for cancer patients, Advocate Christ Medical Center played an integral role in Advocate Health Care’s $614 million contribution in charitable care and services during 2012.
“We continually challenge ourselves to extend our services beyond our hospital walls,” said Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate Health Care. “We are proud to have provided charitable care and services that touched so many lives last year.”
Advocate provided $104 million in free and discounted charity care for the uninsured and underinsured and supplied more than $330 million in care without full reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. In 2012, these benefits alone totaled $434 million in health care service costs.
In addition to free and subsidized care, Advocate Christ Medical Center, in partnership with Advocate, offers programs and services that respond to the unique needs of the communities on the south, southwest and southeast sides of Chicago and in the metropolitan region’s south and southwest suburbs. In 2012, these programs included:
- Live…from the Heart, which teaches junior high school and high school students the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and piques their interest in pursuing careers in the health professions. Conducted in partnership with Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the program allows participants to watch heart surgery being performed live and to question physicians and nurses involved in the surgery through closed-circuit, two-way interactive videoconferencing.
- Surviving and Thriving, a series of free educational and exercise sessions for cancer patients. The series is offered through the medical center’s Cancer Institute.
- Partnership with the Ben Carson Foundation to create reading rooms in under-resourced area elementary schools and provide student scholarships to 20 new students a year.
Advocate Christ Medical Center is one of 12 hospitals in the Advocate Health Care system.
“As a faith-based organization, giving back to the community is inherent in everything that we do,” said Ken Lukhard, president of Advocate Christ Medical Center. “We are so thankful to the patients and families who have entrusted us with their care, and we remain fully committed to offering the kinds of programs that will protect the health – physical, mental and spiritual – of the communities that we serve.”
Advocate Health Care also has made significant investments in language assistance programs, which offer patients access to interpreters and other non-English patient education materials.
Contributions to other not-for-profit community organizations, as well as equipment, supplies and clinic space donations totaled another $6 million in 2012. At the same time, Advocate increased its provision of medical education and training in 2012 to more than $80 million.
As part of its annual Community Benefits Report, a more detailed breakdown of Advocate contributions has been filed with the state of Illinois.
# # #
About Advocate Christ Medical Center
Advocate Christ Medical Center is part of Advocate Health Care, which is one of the nation’s leading health care networks. A not-for-profit, 694-bed, premier teaching institution with more than 1,000 affiliated physicians, Christ Medical Center is a leader in health care and one of the major referral hospitals in the Midwest in a number of specialties, including cardiovascular services, heart and kidney transplantation, neurosciences, oncology, orthopedics and women’s health. The hospital also has one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in Illinois providing emergency care for more than 90,000 patient visits annually and is a leader in breakthrough technologies, including eICU® (electronic intensive care unit) monitoring, robotic da Vinci Surgery System® and CyberKnife® Radiosurgery. In both 2012 and 2013, the medical center was named to the Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals®, while U.S. News & World Report ranked the medical center among the nation’s leading providers for cardiology and heart surgery and for geriatric medicine and ranked it fourth overall among hospitals in the state of Illinois. The hospital is also recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) as a Magnet Center. Magnet status represents the highest honor in the nursing profession. To obtain more information or to visit our newsroom, log on to: www.advocatehealth.com/christ.
About Advocate Health Care
Advocate Health Care, named among the nation’s Top 5 largest health systems by Truven Analytics, is the largest health system in Illinois and one of the largest health care providers in the Midwest. Advocate operates more than 250 sites of care, including 12 hospitals that encompass 11 acute care hospitals, the state’s largest integrated children’s network, five Level I trauma centers (the state’s highest designation in trauma care), two Level II trauma centers, one of the area’s largest home health care companies and one of the region’s largest medical groups. Advocate Health Care trains more primary care physicians and residents at its four teaching hospitals than any other health system in the state. As a not-for-profit, mission-based health system affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, Advocate contributed $614 million in charitable care and services to communities across Chicagoland and Central Illinois in 2012.