Two major Chicago public institutions — Cook County Health and the University of Illinois College of Medicine — are expanding their partnership to provide care to patients, more training for medical students and more research opportunities, they announced Tuesday.
“This work is not simply about efficiency and cost saving, though those two are vital in our challenging items,” Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, said at a news conference. “It’s about something more fundamental. … It’s about ensuring that every person in every community has access to high-quality affordable and equitable care.”
As part of the partnership, Cook County Health and UI Health will work together across more than 16 specialties when it comes to patient care. Patients may be referred across the institutions for specialty care and receive care at both institutions.
UI Health’s University of Illinois Hospital and Cook County Health’s Stroger Hospital sit just blocks apart on the city’s West Side, where they serve many vulnerable patients.
“In the end, this partnership just made commonsense,” said Dr. Mark Rosenblatt, CEO of University of Illinois Hospital & Clinics and dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine.
University of Illinois medical students will also have more access to clerkship rotations at Cook County Health. Clerkship rotations involve hands-on training for medical students at hospitals. The partnership will also lead to expanded residency and clinical fellowship opportunities at both UI Health and Cook County Health. Cook County Health staff will also have more access to educational opportunities at the medical school.
Medical school researchers will help Cook County Health grow its research programs, and both institutions will work to enroll more Cook County Health patients in clinical trials.
Cook County Health and University of Illinois College of Medicine leaders said that the partnership has been 10 years in the making.
The partnership also expands on a previous collaboration between UI Health and Cook County Health. In 2021, the two public health institutions announced a pediatric care partnership, with pediatric providers working across the systems.
The collaboration between the two systems comes after years of growth for private and nonprofit Illinois health systems through mergers and acquisitions. Rush University System for Health — which has its flagship hospital, Rush University Medical Center, near Stroger and University of Illinois Hospital — integrated Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora into its system in 2017 after a 30-year-long affiliation.
