Edward Hospital, DuPage Medical Group team to improve patient access

A joint venture announced by Naperville’s Edward Hospital and the Downers Grove-based DuPage Medical Group is expected to give thousands of new patients access to Edward and physicians easier access to patient records.

While remaining separate entities, Edward and the DuPage Medical Group will form Illinois Health Partners, which will establish a common database of patient records. Combined, the entities serve 1.7 million patients in four counties.

Edward Medical Group currently employs 80 physicians. DuPage Medical Group is affiliated with 320 physicians.

“Currently a patient may be seen by a primary care doctor and then admitted to the hospital and those are seen as separate actions,” Edward Hospital President and CEO Pam Davis said Tuesday. “Illinois Health Partners will allow us to combine that knowledge so everyone will know what’s happening to the patient from the office visit, through the hospital stay to the discharge.”

Mike Kasper, CEO of DuPage Medical Group, said both groups will be linked through a new IT infrastructure to remove “fragmentation” patients often experience when transitioning into or out of hospital care.

“Our doctors will be connected in ways we’ve never seen,” Kasper said. “Essentially we’re creating a common medical record between Edward and the DuPage Medical Group.”

Initially the program will jointly manage the care of roughly 100,000 HMO patients in the West and Southwest suburbs. But officials from both organizations stressed the partnership will extend beyond HMO patients as the two providers attempt to control costs while improving the quality of health care.

Patients from both groups will now be able to see physicians in either group.

“We see this as the best way to give patients better access to primary-care physicians,” Davis said. “We believe, with the new health care legislation, we’ll be seeing an influx of patients who are receiving health care for the first time. So the initial relationship will center around HMO patients but we expect to deliver increased quality to all of our patients.”

Illinois Health Partners eventually will be led by an eight-person board co-chaired by Davis and Kasper. The remaining six members will be selected from both groups.