UChicago Medicine and AdventHealth Partner to Expand Care

The University of Chicago Medicine and AdventHealth have signed a definitive agreement to enter into an affiliation that will increase access to a spectrum of services, treatment options, and cutting-edge clinical trials for residents in Chicago’s western suburbs.

Under the proposed affiliation, UChicago Medicine will acquire a controlling interest in AdventHealth’s Great Lakes Region — which includes its four Illinois hospitals in Bolingbrook, Glendale Heights, Hinsdale, and La Grange — with AdventHealth retaining the remaining ownership and continuing to manage daily operations of the facilities. UChicago Medicine and AdventHealth will each retain their current system-level governance and administrative structures.

The transaction will enable consumers to seamlessly access primary, specialty, and subspecialty medical care across both organizations.

“Joining UChicago Medicine will allow us to further our mission and enhance our ability to deliver high-quality, whole-person care to more people in the communities served in the greater Chicago area,” AdventHealth president and CEO Terry Shaw said.

The affiliation plans come on the heels of UChicago Medicine’s February 2022 announcement to build a US$633 million freestanding comprehensive cancer facility; the August ground breaking of a 130,000-square-foot (about 12,100-square-meter) multispecialty ambulatory center in Crown Point, Indiana; and the summer launch of the South Side Healthy Community Organization, a collaboration between UCM and 12 other health-care organizations dedicated to improving access to high-quality care and scoped to serve more than 400,000 area residents.

“We have been focused on strengthening the ability of UChicago Medicine to deliver outstanding health care to the communities that we serve and expanding our points of access through new partnerships and locations across the region,” Kenneth Polonsky, dean and executive vice-president for Medical Affairs at the University of Chicago. “Following regulatory approval for this affiliation we look forward to working with AdventHealth Great Lakes’ leadership, physicians, and staff.”

Based on the campus of the University of Chicago on the city’s South Side, UChicago Medicine is an integrated academic health system that includes hospitals, outpatient clinics, and physician practices throughout Chicagoland as well as in the suburbs and Northwest Indiana. The health system offers a full range of specialty care services for adults and children through more than 40 institutes and centers, including an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

AdventHealth is a large and successful health system headquartered in Florida that operates 51 hospital campuses in nine states with more than 80,000 team members, 2,400 employed physicians, and almost 18,000 medical staff providers across the organization. AdventHealth’s Great Lakes Region includes AdventHealth Bolingbrook, AdventHealth GlenOaks, AdventHealth La Grange, and AdventHealth Hinsdale, which has been serving the community for more than 100 years, as well as nearly 50 primary and specialty practice locations and two multispecialty ambulatory centers. The Carol Stream and Woodridge ambulatory centers offer primary and specialty care providers, diagnostic imaging, and lab services.

“Partnering with a premier, locally based academic medical institution will allow us to combine the best of community-based care with academic capabilities to expand subspecialty care and develop more high-quality, multidisciplinary services,” Thor Thordarson, president/CEO of AdventHealth Great Lakes Region, said. “This affiliation will produce an expansive and diverse physician network, with over 3,500 providers, to deliver better-integrated, better-coordinated, and more-comprehensive care for patients.”

The proposed transaction requires regulatory approvals. The parties are working toward a formal closing date at the end of 2022 or in early 2023.

“We are excited to be in a position to offer enhanced services to patients who live in the western suburbs by bringing UChicago Medicine’s clinical innovations and highly specialized care to the Great Lakes Region hospitals while maintaining AdventHealth’s historical commitment to convenient access to high-quality, community-based care,” Tom Jackiewicz, president of the University of Chicago Medical Center and Chief Operating Officer of UChicago Medicine, said.

The original version of this story was posted by AdventHealth.