Health & Medicine, in collaboration with 8 other organizations, began the Regional Health Care Safety Net Initiative in 2006 to build on the successes of the previous Chicago/Cook County Summit and to address the new and intensified problems of today.  This Initiative is a process of policy analysis and development of comprehensive solutions to secure an adequate and seamless health safety net for residents of the seven county region of Northeastern Illinois.

The process has focused on the key issues of governance, personal health services, health equity, workforce, finance, and data & demographics.  This collaborative effort, which uses the World Health Organization’s framework for strengthening a health system, is designed to create a regional blueprint to more efficiently and effectively provide quality health services for uninsured, Medicaid, and other vulnerable populations in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties.  The economic downturn, political leadership changes, and shifting populations provide an opportunity to create sustainable change.

Background

In 1990, the Mayor of Chicago, Cook County Board President, and Governor of Illinois convened leaders from the public, private, and not-for-profit health care system, along with business, philanthropic, and community leaders in a Chicago/Cook County Health Summit.  This year-long effort prepared a prospective roadmap to address the problems facing vulnerable populations and providers of the health care safety net in Cook County, with many of the recommendations since implemented.

The ensuing 19 years have seen emergence of new problems and intensification of old ones.  Skyrocketing unemployment, hospital closures, increased number of uninsured, funding cuts across the health system, shifting demographics, clinic consolidations, uncoordinated planning, and new political leadership require we take action, but this time from the regional perspective of northeastern Illinois.  With a national call from the President to reform the health system, and stimulus package money to support safety net institutions, this is our opportunity to answer the call and sure the strength and continuity of our region’s health care safety net.

Our steady progress to date has resulted in a detailed description about each county’s needs and resources (through key informant meetings and assembling of existing data), background information about models in other metropolitan areas, and prioritization and support for this direction at a Pre-Summit meeting last fall.  To access this material, please view the various links and blogs posted in this section.

Action

A series of policy recommendations that emerged from the work of over 100 partners and organizations over the past two years was presented at a day-long Summit on June 23rd, 2009.  The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration co-hosted this Summit as part of a “Strategic Partnership Session.”

At the Summit, participants reviewed, modified, and endorsed the recommendations, and as a unified community, planned for moving the recommendations to action.  The recommendations will be a catalyst to align disparate health planning efforts such as public health department plans (e.g.: IPLANs), the State Health Improvement Plan, etc.  These recommendations will also be used to influence related planning efforts such as the region’s new comprehensive plan, “Go To 2040,” being developed by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP).  These recommendations will enable the regional health safety net to be strengthened and sustained in new and profound ways.  View the full Summit discussion results and preliminary recommendations.

A one page summary of the Summit results can be found here.

View the original “road map” document for this Initiative.

View the post: “Review Materials from the June 23, 2009 Safety Net Summit and Sign-on To Support Our Work” for more information about the Summit.

Next Steps

Health & Medicine will use feedback and suggestions that emerged from the Summit to undertake the following:

• Take the results of the Summit and previous research to stakeholders in each county to determine where there is synergy between their priorities and those that emerged from the Summit.
• Produce a paper which describes the reasons and approach to building a larger constituency for this Initiative.
• Remain in regular communication with our network, providing safety net news, updates, and events.
• Prepare and submit a funding proposal to support the growing network.
• Encourage Summit participants to begin taking action on recommendations they would like to help implement (either in a leader, resource, or participant role). This will be facilitated through additional communications and forums in the months following the Summit.