VIDEO: Northwestern plans to open Chicago South Side clinic to address healthcare access

Clyde W. Yancy, MD, MSc, vice dean for diversity and inclusion, chief of cardiology in the Department of Medicine, and a professor of medicine in cardiology and medical social sciences at Northwestern Medicine, discusses how his center is addressing health access equity issues with plans to open a new outpatient clinic on the historically Black Chicago South Side.

Yancy spoke with Cardiovascular Business about the new clinic during a discussion on how Northwestern is addressing better equity in healthcare access at the American Heart Association (AHA) 2022 meeting. 

"This is not theoretical, this is not 'oh, by the way, if we have enough revenue left over.' This is baked into the fiscal plan, this is a commitment where we will be on the ground doing business in 2025," Yancy explained. 

He said this is not a "corporate speak" initiative, it is a real response to what the community they serve really needs. Several Chicago South Side hospitals have closed over the past couple decades, making it much harder for residents to access healthcare. While people there can take buses or rapid transit trains to downtown Chicago to access Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Yancy said it is a long distance for many and there is a desire by patients to be access care in their own community, rather than in the most upscale areas of the city.

Northwestern has purchased hospitals around Chicago to create a nine hospital system, including hospitals in the higher-income north and western suburbs, three rural hospitals in DeKalb and McHenry, and a hospital that serves the southwest suburbs. However, Northwestern does not have a presence in lower-income areas, mainly on the South Side of Chicago.  

The center is expected to serve more than 50,000 patients annually from Bronzeville and nearby communities. Northwestern also wants to try and staff the majority of the clinic with clinicians who are Black to better reflect the community they will be serving. Construction could begin in summer 2023, with a scheduled opening in summer of 2025.

"We understand that for us to be economically viable in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic incredibly large, pace-setting city in this country, we have to be present in all communities and provide services to all patients. It is a difficult lift, but we are willing to go in all directions to achieve health equity. We understand that achieving health equity helps us achieve our university's objectives and our health system's business model. There is a need for hospitals and sophisticated care delivery models throughout the city, but this is somewhat acute on the South Side," Yancy explained.

“Every day more than 1,000 patients from Bronzeville and its surrounding communities receive care from Northwestern Medicine,” Dean M. Harrison, CEO of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, said in a statement about the new clinic. “This new advanced outpatient care center will provide patients with access to world-class care without having to leave their community."

Another reason for the interest in the South Side is community outreach to high school students who may be interested in careers in healthcare. Yancy said the clinician workforce has seen a major change amid the larger nationwide Great Resignation. In healthcare especially, many clinicians reevaluated their careers during the COVID-19 pandemic and left the direct clinical work, exacerbating a lack of physicians and nurses in the market. He said recruitment on the South Side would help with training more clinicians and recruiting more minorities. Healthcare systems will therefore have more clinicians that reflect the diversity in their patient populations. Both of these are goals of Northwestern and part of its wider investment in the South Side, Yancy said. 
 
"We will start with Bronzeville and I am confident that we will go beyond that," Yancy said.