Fostering innovation in care
Propelling pediatric heart care forward
New and improved medical care saves both lives and money,
essential at a time when health care expenditures threaten
the U.S. economy. Launched in 2004, Advocate’s pioneering
Clinical Integration Program has improved patient outcomes
and achieved significant cost savings by accelerating the
adoption of evidence-based best practices among more than
4,000 affiliated physicians. That success has helped make
Advocate a national leader in accountable care, in which
reimbursement is based not on how much care is provided,
but on how effectively patients are kept well. Donors foster
innovation at Advocate by funding technology and programs
that enable clinicians to offer new treatments and to develop
new approaches to delivering care.
Named after internationally renowned Advocate
Children’s Hospital surgeon Michel Ilbawi, MD, the
Ilbawi procedure is one of the medical advances
that have dramatically increased survival rates
for children born with congenital heart defects.
Recently the hospital was approved to start
implanting the Berlin Heart, an artificial heart that
can help keep children alive while they await a
heart transplant—as up to four Advocate Children’s
Hospital patients do each year—and even give
their own hearts the opportunity to heal in some
instances. Philanthropy is supporting the education
and training of caregivers in the use of this state-ofthe-art device.
A new paradigm for Alzheimer’s care
Because the ranks of the elderly are swelling
while the ranks of geriatricians are not, Advocate
has taken a revolutionary approach to caring for
patie nts with Alzheimer’s disease. Funded by a
multimillion-dollar estate gift, the Alzheimer’s
Support Center educates thousands of caregivers
across the system about how to recognize and
respond to signs of dementia in seniors they may
be treating for other conditions. Among many other
benefits, the Center has supported nurses with
advanced training in elder care, and these nurses in
turn are creating a system-wide initiative to identify,
treat and prevent delirium.
Improving treatments through research
A kindergartener when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor,
third-grader Isaac Parris was operated on by neurosurgeon John
Ruge, MD, founder of the Midwest Children’s Brain Tumor Center at
Advocate Children’s Hospital. Credited with developing several new
neurosurgical techniques, Dr. Ruge was the first in the state of Illinois
to perform Intraoperative MRI–guided surgery, and he was the first
in the world to perform tumor-dye surgery on children: Infusing a
special dye into the patient’s blood makes it easier to see and remove
the entire tumor while avoiding healthy tissue and blood vessels.
515
pediatric open-heart
surgeries performed at
Advocate annually
$763,333
Cures for many non-infectious diseases remain
elusive, but countless lives are saved thanks
to incremental improvements in care. Such
improvements are identified by physicians
and nurses who record and analyze patients’
responses to existing procedures and medications.
Advocate is active in quality-improvement and
comparative-effectiveness research; its large,
diverse patient population and integrated, multisite delivery network uniquely position Advocate
to compile the kind of data that can influence
the practice of medicine nationwide. In addition,
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital clinicians
are collaborating with laboratory scientists on
translational research projects designed to
bring basic-science discoveries “from bench
to bedside.” Donors funded nearly $600,000 in
research conducted through the hospital’s
James R. and Helen D. Russell Institute for
Research and Innovation in 2013.
in donor support
of Advocate research
in 2013
40%
projected increase
in incidence of Alzheimer’s
disease by 2025
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