The Coleman Foundation Announces Second Quarter 2019 Cancer Care and Health Rehabilitation Services Grants
In the second quarter of 2019, the Coleman Foundation approved grants totaling $500,000 to non-profit organizations in the cancer care and health rehabilitation program area advancing strategies articulated in the Foundation’s Impact Plans. Receiving grants in this program area are:
La Rabida Children’s Hospital, IL
$150,000 – Expansion of Inpatient Specialty Care
This award is to support expansion of inpatient specialty care. La Rabida frequently transports children to local hospitals for a variety of specialist follow-up visits, consultations and medical testing. These medical day trips are a complicated and burdensome method of accessing the care children need. As most patients are dependent upon medical technology, such as a respirator and/or gastrostomy tube, a half day trip in an ambulance to another hospital and back requires careful planning, pulls nursing and respiratory therapy staff away from other patients and exposes children to some additional risk to their physical health and emotional well-being.
La Rabida’s goal is to expand the level of sub-specialty care to provide increased access for inpatients and reduce the number of medical day trip. Through the use of telemedicine, pediatricians will have a method to enhance communication between referring hospitals, specialists and the medical team at LaRabida. Telemedicine would also assist to facilitate transitions for patients transferring in or out of the hospital and enable clinicians to be evaluated by the specialty team while remaining at La Rabida.
$250,000 – Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Department Entrance Renovation
This award is to support renovations to the Emergency Department (ED) at Mount Sinai Hospital, a Level 1 Trauma Center with strong partnerships with the Chicago Fire Department and various private ambulance companies. Relationships with ambulance companies have been integral in helping Sinai better understand and respond to the factors that impact emergency department volumes. Sinai learned that ambulance drivers take patients to emergency departments at other local hospitals when it rains or snows. Currently, Sinai’s Emergency Department provides over 48,000 visits per year. Through evaluation of ambulance delivery metrics, it was discovered that on days with precipitation ambulance deliveries to Sinai drop by about 30%. By redesigning the ED entrance and covering the ambulance bays, Sinai projects that ambulance deliveries will increase by up to 30% on days with precipitation. This would enable Sinai to serve approximately 533 more patients annually. The renovations to the ED entrance are scheduled to be completed by November 2019.
University of Chicago Medicine, IL
$350,000 – South Side Pediatric Asthma Center (SSPAC) Program Expansion
This award is to expand the impact of the South Side Pediatric Asthma Center. SSPAC was implemented as a multi-institution partnership with a goal to improve health outcomes for children with asthma by facilitating access to care, promoting standardized treatment, and educating through community outreach. To have the greatest impact toward improving asthma outcomes, SSPAC will scale up and expand outreach and education to the South Side health care delivery ecosystem by: 1) providing access to Community Health Workers for all community health centers; 2) increasing the capacity of diagnoses and treatment of asthma through spirometry; 3) adding a Respiratory Therapist to educate and train clinicians in spirometry utilization; and 4) supporting the capacity for asthma education and comprehensive support services within Chicago Public Schools.
