A new Catholic health system will be headquartered in Chicago, although it does not have any health care facilities in Illinois. The new system will be created by the merger of Dignity Health, a 22-state health care system based in San Francisco, and Catholic Health Initiatives, which is based in Englewood, Colorado, and operates in 17 states. The new health system will include more than 700 care sites and 139 hospitals, offering people and communities access to quality care delivered by approximately 159,000 employees and more than 25,000 physicians and other advanced practice clinicians, according to a statement released Dec. 7. The organizations are geographically complementary with no overlap across hospital service areas, the statement said. Chicago was chosen as the site for the new headquarters because it is centrally located, said Lauren Davis, director of communications for Dignity Health, in an email. A name will be chosen by the board of trustees for the new organization sometime in the second half of 2018, Davis said. Officials from Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives say combining resources will allow them to increase focus on community-based care. “We are joining together to create a new Catholic health system, one that is positioned to accelerate the change from sick-care to well-care across the United States,” said Kevin E. Lofton, chief executive officer of CHI, in the statement. “Our new organization will have the talent, depth, breadth and passion to improve the health of every person and community we serve.” “By combining our ministries and building upon our shared mission, we will expand our commitment to meeting the needs of all people with compassion, regardless of income, ethnicity, or language,” said Lloyd Dean, president and chief executive officer of Dignity Health. “We foresee an incredible opportunity to expand each organization’s best practices to respond to the evolving health care environment and deliver high-quality, cost-effective care.”
Catholic hospitals draw on spiritual roots to support staff, patients As hospitals across Illinois and the rest of the country were inundated by COVID-19 patients in January, Chicago-area Catholic hospitals looked to their spiritual roots to offer support not only to patients but to staff members who are exhausted.
First responders at OSF Little Company of Mary share pandemic experiences When the pandemic forced businesses and other institutions to shut down and hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 patients, Krisha Germscheid, an emergency room nurse at OSF Healthcare Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Evergreen Park, was on her way back from vacation with her husband and young son.
OSF Healthcare partners with state to provide COVID-19 kits Every day, Gigi Wasz goes into her office at OSF HealthCare in Oak Lawn and gets a list of people who have asked for help through the state-funded Pandemic Health Worker Program.