Making strides in community-based healthcare

Imagine walking into a clinic with a foot injury, only to be told you would need to walk a third of a mile - 700 steps - to see your clinician. Until recently, this was the experience for patients at the Cook County Health and Hospitals System's (CCHHS) main South Suburbs site, a sprawling, difficult-to-navigate campus.

CCHHS is a quintessential urban safety net hospital system and is seen as a bellwether nationally for the challenges and opportunities of the Affordable Care Act. Its Oak Forest Health Center clinic, which accommodates 13,000 patients each year, is one of few healthcare options in the South Suburbs of Chicago and serves some of the poorest residents of Cook County.

This summer, Civic Consulting Alliance helped transform the facility into a one-stop shop for care, consolidating medical clinics and laboratories into a single wing and recommending process improvements to make the facility easy to navigate for patients. The goal is to help more patients receive timely care and avoid the need for emergency services.

Now, a patient with a foot injury entering the clinic will need to take just 10 paces to reach the doorstep of his or her clinician, representing a major step in providing timely, high-quality care.

"The spark [Civic Consulting Alliance] gave to this effort was a huge relief to clinicians - but more importantly, patients - who had suffered by the inefficient and far-flung distribution of clinical services there," said Dr. John Jay Shannon, Chief Executive Officer at CCHHS.