40 Under 40 - 2024

Since starting at Peoria, Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, Ryan Luginbuhl has played an integral part in furthering the system’s oncology department, including the development of a $300 million cancer center. 

Patients in the region who want to participate in experimental cancer treatment trials are usually sent to larger city hospitals or health systems, which can mean a lot of time away from family. 

The OSF HealthCare Cancer Institute will allow more patients to receive cutting-edge treatments while staying close to home. As the health system's oncology service line director, Luginbuhl has been a key leader in its design. 

“It is more expensive for us to serve people where they live,” he said. “But it's also the right thing to do, to engage them in their healthcare.” 

It’s a project that Luginbuhl, who started at OSF in 2007 as an X-ray technician, described as the most exciting of his career. 

As for why he decided to focus on oncology, Luginbuhl said he recalls picking up his local newspaper and reading a stranger’s obituary, someone who died from a very aggressive type of breast cancer. 

“I think you can have one of two reactions to reading an obituary [of] a complete stranger—and that's either I'm gonna fight, or I'm gonna just kind of push that under the rug and try to ignore that,” Luginbuhl said. “The people that I'm working with at the Cancer Institute at OSF [are] motivated to fight every day and it doesn't cease.”

—Hayley DeSilva