We expanded our ability to meet patients where they live by launching a new, larger, fully equipped mobile health unit that offers care in Chicago’s neighborhoods. The unit has running water, internet access, clinic rooms and other enhanced features. Several subspecialty services at Lurie Children’s are planning to use the mobile unit to better reach communities, including weight and wellness, neonatology, cardiology, gastroenterology and more.
Thirty years ago Lurie Children’s performed its first stem cell transplant in a cancer patient and won recognition as the first freestanding pediatric program to achieve formal accreditation. This year brought a milestone: our 1500th transplant with a program that is nationally recognized for its quality, excellence of outcomes and leading-edge treatments. The Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies program includes comprehensive care for pediatric malignancies, immunodeficiency disorders, thalassemia, sickle cell, and other blood disorders.
Lurie Children’s partnered this year with PM Pediatric Care, a national pediatric urgent care leader, to serve area families with best-in-class urgent care for children and young adults. Currently serving patients at three sites in the west and northwest suburbs, the joint venture will develop additional sites in the near future. With late night, weekend, and holiday hours available, many ill and injured children can avoid an emergency department visit and be successfully treated within their own community.
Lurie Children’s language interpreters are much more than word-for-word translators: they are the crucial link between care providers and patient families who speak languages other than English. Key to the hospital’s goal to reduce health care disparities, they ensure that explanations by medical staff are understood and patient families’ concerns are addressed. With more than 25 in-person interpreters and translators as well as video-remote and phone-based interpretation in 180 languages, the team set new records this year with more than 30,000 interpreting encounters and more than 3,000 translated documents.
Advocacy, a key pillar of our mission, is critical to ensuring sound public policy and access to quality health care for children. Lurie Children’s experts share data, their expertise and testimony to shape public policy for children. Lurie Children’s covers the shortfall between free and under-reimbursed Medicaid care consistent with our commitment to treat all children regardless of ability to pay; nearly 60 percent of our inpatient stays in 2023 were for children insured by Medicaid. Advocacy efforts in FY23 resulted in $12 million in emergency funding to address the nursing labor shortage and $21 million in new Medicaid funding annually, an important first step toward the creation of a sustainable solution to the structural Medicaid reimbursement deficit, which we are working on closely with key policy makers. In FY23, the institution invested $290.3 million in unreimbursed charity care, under-reimbursement from caring for patients insured by Medicaid and community benefit programs.