Maria Cervantes was hours away from giving birth to twin girls.
You never miss your family more than when you’re feeling scared or uncertain, said the 34-year-old mother, propped up by pillows on her bed at St. Anthony Hospital in Little Village. Her husband, Ricardo Carabez, paced around, wearing a Yankees hat and a cutoff T-shirt that read “Orlando, Florida.”
Cervantes and Carabez, also 34, came to Chicago almost two decades ago from Mexico. Though Cervantes has been back to Mexico, Carabez hasn’t been back for 17 years, he said.
A new technology at St. Anthony Hospital is now connecting mothers and newborns with family and friends across the U.S. and Mexico. The new system is just the latest in an array of services the community hospital is offering to make its patients feel welcome regardless of citizenship status as Chicago’s migrant population has grown to over 13,500 in the past year.
Hospital President and CEO Guy Medaglia initiated the idea of installing interactive TVs, said chief nursing officer Raquel Prendkowski. In April, St. Anthony partnered with MDM Healthcare to get screens with built-in security measures. Each module must have a special type of country permission, she said, to keep patients safe.
The TV technology provides a hands-free method for patients — who may not be able to access a cellphone or tablet while undergoing care or holding a newborn — to connect with their family and friends across borders. St. Anthony is the first hospital in the city to market the technology.
“And we’re going to put every bell and whistle on that we can to appreciate our patients and make them feel the utmost at home,” said Prendkowski. “We seek the opportunities out to help people (who) don’t have services.”
A large screen mounted to the wall flashed a live video of Carabez’s sister, Daysi Cecilia Caravel, from Michoacán, Mexico. Cervantes looked at her sister-in-law’s face and slid into easy conversation.
“I want it to go quickly. I hope they don’t make me suffer,” laughed Cervantes, speaking in Spanish to her husband’s sister, who was sitting in her office in Mexico. “I took the medicine, and now all we can do is wait.”
‘We don’t care where they come from’
Hospitals across the city recognize the health necessities of the thousands of migrants who have come to Chicago over the last year, mostly from Central and South America, said Alicia Velasquez-Hill, manager of perinatal services at St. Anthony.
More Top Picks Best Toto Washlet Alternatives
The video technology is just one of the services St. Anthony provides to expectant mothers. Other resources include prenatal education, breastfeeding and birthing classes in English and Spanish, free car seats after delivery, family visitation, help enrolling in Medicaid and more, according to the hospital. St. Anthony’s wider services range from surgical services to community wellness.
But its reach is not limited within the hospital’s walls.
Case managers and community resource educators from St. Anthony have been visiting the police stations near the hospital — the 9th, 10th and 11th Districts — on a weekly basis to provide resources for new arrivals staying there, according to health care access supervisor Karina Cordova. They provide legal advice, connection to food pantries, information about workers’ rights and help applying for medical benefits.
Cordova said when St. Anthony started outreach at police districts in the beginning of June, they found a lot of people who were eligible to apply for benefits — from kids to expectant mothers.
“We can actually complete these applications so that asylum-seekers can start receiving medical care,” Cordova said. “That’s something that we’re still continuing to strive for.”
Any self-pay patient — or patient without medical insurance — can work with the hospital financial services team to fill out an application for Medicaid, according to the director of patient access services at St. Anthony, Angelica Ibarra. The hospital also has a community wellness program that takes any individual from the surrounding area, regardless of whether they have used services at the hospital.
Over a dozen patients often register for Medicaid and financial services in a day, Ibarra said.
“We want patients to come in and feel that they’re not being judged. We don’t care where they come from,” she said.
Ibarra said St. Anthony has brought in additional providers to extend women’s health services at its Little Village Clinic and Physician Center in response to the thousands of migrants who have come to Chicago this year.
“Some of them are very frustrated. They come from different backgrounds,” Ibarra said. “We just make sure that we understand and we listen to the patient. It’s hard to do at times.”
The maternity center
Once a patient using the video technology is discharged, their video record is wiped clean, said chief nursing officer Prendkowski. St. Anthony only has built-ins for Mexico right now, but they are hoping to expand their outreach to other countries.
Prendkowski said there was a mother from Guatemala who did a tour of the maternity center and when she saw the TV, she started crying.
“She was excited. She said, ‘I hope this is up and running and when I’m delivering that I get to call my family,'” recalled Prendkowski.
Velasquez-Hill, who is from Little Village and speaks Spanish, beamed at Cervantes as nurses monitored how she was doing prior to the Aug. 17 birth.
“They seem very happy,” she said about the couple. “I think they have good support system at home.”
Two of Velasquez-Hill’s own grandchildren were born at St. Anthony. Though she has a supervisor role at the hospital, she said her favorite part of the job is working the floor and being by the bedsides.
“The patients that come here love the staff. They appreciate the fact we can speak the language. Quite a bit of our staff can speak Spanish,” said Velasquez-Hill.
‘When patients feel understood by their providers’
According to a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, just under half of Hispanic adults say they have a close friend or family member who needs a Spanish-speaking health care provider or translator, and 3 in 10 say they have a close friend or family member who worries about their legal status in the U.S. when deciding whether to see a health care provider.
In June, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration announced plans to close enrollment for a state-funded health insurance program for immigrants under 65 in the country without legal permission, and cap enrollment for those 65 and older, in efforts to cut budget costs.
Jane Lee, a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, conducts research about reducing health disparities among immigrant populations.
“When patients feel understood by their providers or when they feel like they’re able to communicate, it does have an impact on perceptions of their health, perceptions of the services that they receive, and ultimately on health outcomes,” she said.
Lee said many refugee populations have an accumulation of trauma, not just in the U.S., but also in their countries of origin. There is often an inherent sense of loneliness, she said.
“Just because time passes doesn’t mean we forget where we come from, or the communities that we were with back home, or the reasons why we left,” she said. “Just because somebody’s been here for a long time doesn’t mean they don’t hold a lot of their experiences from the past.”
Though Carabez hasn’t been back to Mexico, he said he calls his parents almost every day. It meant a lot to them they would be able to see the newborn twins immediately upon birth, he said.
Welcoming Violeta and Julieta
St. Anthony Hospital was founded in 1898. It has served working-class communities in Little Village and stuck out demographic and political shifts for over a century. St. Anthony has opened its doors to new waves of migrants nearby and using new technologies to become a crossroads of communication across borders.
More Top Picks Best Cupping Therapy Sets For Home Use
The morning after Cervantes and husband Carabez checked in, he looked at her with pride. Just hours earlier, she’d given birth to their twins — Violeta and Julieta Cervantes, both less than 10 pounds. The couple also has a 2-year-old daughter, Hale.
Carabez rubbed his eyes before getting up from the futon where he’d spent the night. The lights were still off in the room and soft light from rain clouds touched the machines next to the window.
He leaned against Cervantes’ bed as she talked with her sister-in-law on the large screen. Velasquez-Hill picked up the plastic containers where Violeta and sister Julieta were laying and leaned them at an angle toward the TV so Caravel could see her two nieces over 2,000 miles away.
Violeta and Julieta were wrapped in a white sheet with small handprints and wore bows around their heads. A small patch of Violeta’s hair crept out from under her bow. Her sister Julieta wiggled next to her. It was their first video call.
The machine that had been beeping and humming to monitor the twins’ heartbeats in Cervantes’ belly the day before sat silently in the corner of the room.
baiduhai’s Armando Sanchez contributed.