On Christmas Eve in 2023, Rick Albright called an ambulance for his wife, Rose Anne, who suffered a lot. This ambulance took him to the Mercy Medical Center in Aurora, who is only four minutes by car from the Albrights’ home.
It was a hospital to which the two had been before-he had already been hospitalized after a stroke, and his wife was operated there, Rick Albright told Beacon-News. He said that the two had long been treated by doctors with Advocate Health Care, a non -profit medical group with a great presence in Aurora, and when they previously went to Mercy Medical Center, lawyers of lawyers were there to see them.
But when the two arrived at the emergency room of the Mercy Medical Center the day before Christmas in 2023 and learned that she had a gastric problem, they were told that her gastroenterologist lawyer, the same who had already operated on her in this same hospital, could not see her, according to Rick Albright.
He said it was the first time that he had heard that defending doctors could not see them at Mercy Medical Center.
While the doctor on call did an excellent job, which ends up doing surgery to eliminate certain biles, it was “completely the chance of the draw,” he said.
These types of stories could become more common now than Advocate has removed his doctors from Mercy Medical Center without largely informing his patients of change. About half a dozen people who are currently working or have recently stopped working at Mercy have confirmed to the Beacon-News that doctors recommend the Mercy Medical Center.
In a statement sent to the Beacon-News, Advocate said that it “moves all hospital services to defend the good Samaritan hospital in Downers Grove and surrounding hospitals”, which is underway to “provide the highest and highest care for our patients where they need” and “help us continue to coordinate and integrate care for our patients who need hospital services” and To “help us coordinate and integrate care for our patients who need hospital services” and make us contact details and integrate care for our patients who need hospital services. “”
Most of the care care provided to his patients take place in his clinics, whose locations do not change, according to the Advocate Declaration.
When a spokesman for the lawyer was asked when and how patients are informed of this change, they said it was done “as part of the planning process”.
Prime Healthcare, which recently Bought Mercy Medical Center as well as a number of other ascent hospitalsAlso confirmed that Advocate Health decided “to ban their doctors from continuing to provide care in our hospital”. However, there is currently “no impact on the hospital care of the hospital and no impact on patient care or access,” Mercy spokesperson recently told The Beacon-News.
Prime Healthcare asked advocate to reconsider its decision, but “our efforts have been refused,” said the spokesperson.
According to Mercy spokesperson, the last lawyers, the last doctors of the defenders of the hospital, were officially withdrawn from Mercy Medical Center on April 5.
Advocate previously offered other types of care at Mercy – notably ENT, Pulmonology, Urology and Hospitalist Care – but these doctors were withdrawn before the hospital’s purchase, said Mercy spokesperson.
Jennifer Vitale, a certified registered anesthesiologist who has been working on the Mercy Medical Center for about 15 years, said that defenders of surgeons general and gastroenterologists were among the first to leave. The two have left for over a year, she said.
Other doctors of the defenders’ health services were withdrawn at the end of last year or at the beginning of this year, including orthopedics; Doctors on the ear, nose and throat; Pulmonology; urology; intensive care physicians; Podiatry and hospitalists, according to Richa Sharma, a doctor who until February 14 worked in the Mercy Medical Center intensive care unit and was the president of the Hospital in internal medicine.
Sharma and Vitale, including no work for Advocate Health, was one of those who agreed to appear publicly to confirm that Advocate withdrew his doctors from Mercy Medical Center.
Sharma said the defenders’ hospitalists represented between 30% and 50% of all hospitalists working at Mercy Medical Center. Hospitalists act as general doctors and coordinate care among other doctors for hospital patients.
Most surgical care of Mercy Medical Center also came from health care lawyers, according to Vitale. Although she has seen many changes in administration at Mercy over the years, she has never seen anything like it, she said.
When he was asked to confirm what types of lawyer doctors no longer work at Mercy Medical Center, a lawyer spokesperson referred to the company’s declaration on the situation.
Certain specialized departments of Mercy Medical Center were struck by the withdrawal of Advocate than others. Sharma told Beacon -News at the end of last year that the group for which she works – solid doctors – had been contracted to provide 50% of intensive care at Mercy, while the other half came from Advocate health care.
Prime Healthcare decided to go with a different group for intensive care services, which is why Sharma no longer works at Mercy, she told Beacon-News last month.
According to Sharma, according to Sharma. But, she declared at the end of last year that there was another group already providing Podatrie services at Mercy, and that they were going to continue, so “it would not be a huge gap”.
The main thing, said Sharma, at the time, was that the lawyer withdrawing from the Mercy Medical Center was an additional layer of instability in addition to the instability caused by the purchase of the hospital by premium.
While Prime now says that he committed all the gaps left by the lawyer who withdraw his doctors, Sharma said in January that the hospital had to conclude agreements with other local hospitals to take patients due to gaps in the coverage.
“All the effects planned are currently taking place,” said Sharma in January about Advocate withdrawing his doctors from Mercy Medical Center.
At the time, the agreements were still under work with groups to cover orthopedics and urology, there was no pneumology coverage and there were questions around the coverage of the ear, nose and throat, she said in January.
Rick Albright described the situation as “stupid” when he spoke to the Beacon-News.
“We are the second largest city in Illinois, and Advocate, with whom I have been involved since they were Dreyer, they try to send us everywhere for our procedures,” he said.
If Rose Anne Albright had wanted to see her own doctor’s lawyer this Christmas Eve after being examined while she was in great pain in the Mercy Medical Center, the same hospital where her lawyer was previously managed her surgery, she would have needed another ambulance at the Bon Samaritan hospital in Downers Grove, which “makes no sense and is extremely expensive”, said Rick Albright.
Although those who have lawyers are always able to come and do procedures in Mercy, it would be out of network for them, Sharma told Beacon-News. She said it means procedures can be more expensive and more difficult to approve.
Mercy Medical Center provides care for a “poorly served community”, and many local residents will no longer have access to hospital care in their own community if they are patients in the health care of defenders and cannot afford beyond the city, according to Vitale.
Another concern of Vitale is that, as Mercy Medical Center loses doctors, quality staff can also be lost. She also wonders if Mercy will be able to maintain the same level of care that the hospital has provided over the years.
She loves the hospital, she said, and thinks it is a unique place that has maintained a feeling of community and family.
“It is strategically in an excellent location. It is in the middle of a large community of people,” said Vitale about Mercy Medical Center. “I have the impression that this community needs this resource.”
Advocate Health Care also withdrew the doctors of Rush Copley Medical Center, the other hospital in Aurora, but this process was more progressive than what happened in Mercy, said president and chief executive officer of Rush Copley, John Diederich, at Beacon-News.
In the 1990s, lawyers of lawyers represented approximately 50% of income from care for Rush Copley patients, but this has dropped since then, falling to around 35% in the 2000s and around 25% in the 2010s, according to Diederich. He said that a more “dramatic” judgment had occurred in 2022, when Advocate did not renew the lease on a large space on the Rush Copley campus which he held for 13 years, then started to draw his doctors from the hospital.
Between mid-2022 and the beginning of 2023, 90% of lawyers have resigned from Rush Copley medical staff, said Diederich. This included ophthalmologists from defenders, Paismologists, orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, GI doctors and Ob-Gyn, he said.
Some defending doctors remain, including cardiologists, nephrologists and hospitalists, but they only represent 5% of patient care income from the hospital at this stage, Diederich said in February.
While the dismissal of Rush Copley by Advocate Health Care was a success for hospital income, which Diederich called a “short-term bump”, Rush Copley was able to recover, both to fill the gaps that the lawyer left with his own medical group and widen this medical group to make the growth of the community, he said.
“I think that the short -term Advocate strategy was our long -term opportunity,” said Diederich.
Mercy Medical Center spokesman said that the lawyer held his doctors, the hospital does not have gaps in care or coverage and remains “deeply engaged in our mission to provide compassionate, accessible and community care”.
“Prime Healthcare has succeeded in the services in the past, and we will continue to do so with the same level of diligence and dedication,” said the spokesperson. “Our patients deserve nothing less.”
rsmith@chicagogne.com
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