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Loyola Specialists Being Deployed at Hickory Hills and Other Sites

Loyola’s primary care physicians have become well established in communities from Glendale Heights to Orland Park over the past 10 years. To meet specific community needs, Loyola’s specialty physicians are now joining them at many locations.

The Loyola Center for Health at Hickory Hills, for example, has been growing and thriving for five years at a prominent location on 95th St. and Roberts Rd. The center now has entered the next phase of its development with renovation and expansion that has doubled the facility from 10,000 to 20,000 square-feet, which allows the addition of numerous specialists.

“We are bringing Loyola’s expertise to the communities,” said Anthony Barbato, M.D., president and CEO, Loyola University Health System (LUHS). Patients can see specialists in their own neighborhoods and know they have the vast resources of one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers close at hand. That means they will have access to other specialists to collaborate on treatment plans, leading-edge technologies and, often, clinical trials not available elsewhere.

Demographic data shows that the birthrate in Hickory Hills and neighboring towns of Tinley Park, Palos Heights and Orland Park is very high. Anticipating the growing demand for services, Loyola has emphasized pediatric specialties at the Hickory Hills site. Market research revealed that the Hickory Hills area has a great need for ophthalmology services, so that will also be one focus at that Loyola site. Other areas of emphasis at Hickory Hills will be cardiology, otolaryngology and rehabilitation.

“A trend in the health-care field and at Loyola is to develop centers of excellence where patients can get everything they need for a particular condition at one location,” said Elizabeth Frye, M.D., senior vice president and medical director of ambulatory programs at LUHS.

“Centers of excellence for specialty care are convenient not only for patients, but also enable physicians from different specialties to collaborate and provide higher quality care,” Frye said. For example, frequent urinary tract infections in children may be caused by reflux, which often requires surgery. At Hickory Hills, a pediatric nephrologist and a pediatric urologist work closely together. 

Another benefit of locating primary care and specialty physicians in communities rather than just at the medical center campus, is that the physicians can get to know and garner a better understanding of the communities where their patients live and work. “It has been scientifically proven that illness is impacted by the environment in which you live,” Frye said.

Other hubs of specialty care Loyola has developed include orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the Primary Care Center at Darien, neurosciences at the Primary Care Center at Wheaton, and women’s health at the Family Health Center at LaGrange Park. Loyola’s Oakbrook Terrace Medical Center, which is a multi-specialty hub like Hickory Hills, is continually expanding its services. The center will soon add high-tech imaging capabilities, including an open MRI scanner and a closed CT scanner.

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