Planning a new future for Cook County's public health system

What happens when one of the largest public hospital systems in the country starts getting paid to keep patients healthy, not just to respond to the sick? The Affordable Care Act required the Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS) to adjust to this new funding paradigm. To meet this challenge, CCHHS used federal funding to bring healthcare coverage to low-income Cook County residents. CCHHS then enrolled more than 95,000 adults in its new health plan (CountyCare) and built an extensive network of healthcare providers to serve them.

Despite this progress, hard decisions remained about where to focus and how to adjust to new funding pressures. In 2014, a team of CCHHS executives looked at different populations, financial scenarios, external perspectives, and the best models across the country.

Civic Consulting Alliance, along with partners from Strategy&, Deloitte LLP, The PrivateBank, and University of Illinois at Chicago, convened a series of monthly workshops with the CCHHS leadership team to drive important decisions for the future of the system.

"These deliberations played a substantial role in organizational priorities articulated in our fiscal year 2015 budget," said CCHHS CEO Dr. John Jay Shannon. "We commit as an institution to focusing on action to bring [Civic Consulting Alliance's] work with us to life."