Advocate Aurora Health is teaming up with a fast-growing Chicago company to provide high-touch primary care for seniors in Elgin, Ill.
Advocate Aurora, the area's largest health system, and Oak Street Health today announced that they're partnering to open a co-branded primary-care center in the northwest suburb. The 10,000-square-foot facility at 822 Summit St. is expected to open in April.
Oak Street provides community-based care—including primary care, transportation and insurance education—to people on Medicare. Since launching its first clinic in 2013 on Chicago's North Side, the company has opened 40 centers in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Philadelphia and expects to treat a total of 50,000 patients this year.
While Oak Street will manage the Elgin primary-care center, "we really want to coordinate closely and integrate the Advocate specialists, hospitals, ancillary services," said Mike Pykosz, CEO and co-founder of Oak Street Health.
Financial terms of the deal are being kept confidential, said Scott Powder, chief strategy officer at Advocate Aurora.
Powder and Pykosz said they view the Elgin center as a pilot that could lead to future collaborations. "We said, as a way to work together and get to know each other, let's start with a market where there is a significant population of seniors," Powder added.
The Advocate Aurora partnership marks the first time Oak Street is collaborating with a large integrated healthcare system.
Such collaborations are becoming more prevalent across the historically fragmented healthcare industry as health systems look to expand their clinical capabilities and generally bulk up.
"A person's health and how good their health is, of course, is impacted by medical care they receive. But it's even more impacted by things like social determinants of health, food security, nutrition, behavioral and metal health issues," Powder said. "There is a whole range of things that are outside of the traditional purview of a hospital or even a physician practice. . . .As big as we are, we can't do everything."
"Advocate Aurora, Oak Street Health collaborate on primary care center" was originally published in Crain's Chicago Business.
