Two of the Chicago area’s largest Catholic-owned health-care systems have signed a major affiliation to develop clinical ventures they hope will boost business and improve patient treatment.
Frankfort-based Provena Health, operator of seven hospitals in Illinois, and Loyola University Health System, parent of Loyola University Medical Center in west suburban Maywood, this spring will jointly develop programs focusing on perinatal and neonatal care, pediatrics and neurosurgery. The two say the arrangement could eventually expand to other areas.
Under the agreement, specialists and resident physicians from Loyola will provide medical services at Provena hospitals and clinics. The two wouldn’t disclose financial terms of the relationship, but they say both systems’ facilities could see more admissions and increased revenues as a result of the linkage.
Provena lost money last year, but the system wouldn’t disclose how much. It is trying to execute a turnaround plan.
Loyola has been making money, but the system’s net profits fell 17 percent, to $11.3 million in 2001 from $13.6 million in 2000, according to the organization’s annual report. Loyola’s revenues last year rose 6 percent, to $537 million from $506 million in 2000.
“We want to grow and we think this is a way for Provena to grow and Loyola to grow,” said Trisha Cassidy, Loyola’s senior vice president of system development and strategy.
For Loyola, the relationship could result in increased patient referrals from Provena’s facilities, which are community hospitals less specialized to handle certain patients. Loyola, one of the Chicago area’s five academic medical centers, will get additional locations for its residents to train and its specialist physicians to treat patients.
Provena will benefit by marketing the expertise of a teaching hospital and related specialized services to its communities. Provena owns area hospitals in Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, Joliet and Kankakee and further downstate in Danville and Urbana.
“This raises the bar for the Provena hospitals to have that [Loyola] relationship and those specialties . . . rather than sending every patient that needed specialized care elsewhere,” said Tom Hansen, Provena vice president for business development.
More Top Picks Best Sleeper Sofas
Ravenswood options: Advocate Health Care is considering buyers other than health-care companies for Ravenswood Medical Center on Chicago’s North Side. The Ravenswood campus is likely to retain certain medical services, but most inpatient services are being transferred to nearby Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in the next few months, Advocate officials say. Oak Brook-based Advocate earlier this year disclosed several options, including a sale or closure of Ravenswood, which lost more than $30 million last year.
Stop burning? A health-care consumer group is urging Lake Forest-based medical waste company Stericycle Inc. to stop the practice of incinerating.
Washington-based Health Care Without Harm, an environmental watchdog for the health-care industry, said incinerating medical waste can produce certain carcinogens that lead to health problems like birth defects, although the report did not cite specific instances in which people have been harmed.
For its part, Stericycle said it has acquired about 20 incinerators at various plants in the last seven years but has closed half of them. It still incinerates at some locations because federal and state standards require certain medical waste to be incinerated.
“In the past 18 months, we have reduced the amount of waste that was going through incinerators by half,” Tony Tomasello, Stericycle’s executive vice president and chief technical officer, said. “All of these remaining units meet or exceed the current federal and state standards.”