1:15 PM - The University of Chicago Medicine

Transcription

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER : 2006 ANNUAL REPORT
At the Forefront of Medicine 24/7
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
LEADERSHIP/
FINANCIALS
One of the chief sources of the city of Chicago’s global stature sits prominently on the South Side in the
historic, tree-lined Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago Medical Center—almost a city in
itself—draws healers and patients from around the world to the corners of 58th Street and South Maryland
Avenue. From the nurses, technicians, housekeepers and administrators to the world-renowned physicians
and scientists who have built and maintained the Medical Center’s reputation, the institution stays at the
forefront of medicine 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The following pages offer a glimpse into a typical week inside a vast academic medical center. At any given
moment, caregivers, researchers, executives and technicians—everyone from housekeeping assistants to
helicopter pilots to computational neurobiologists—work together to make this city, the state of health
care, the world of medicine and sometimes even themselves a little bit better.
AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT: 24/7
2 : UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER
At any given moment,
most of the 9,500 people who work at the University of Chicago Medical Center are doing
something that, for them at least, is quite routine. They might be waxing the floor,
wielding a scalpel or writing a research paper. At any time they could be filling out
reports, filing a grant proposal or flying a helicopter. In the middle of the night, they
could be telling a funny story to a frightened child, transporting an elderly patient to
her CT scan or transplanting a pair of lungs. Many are engaged in activities that may
seem highly specialized, even daunting to an outsider, but are fairly ordinary if you are
the person who does them over and over, day after day.
This annual report is designed to provide an episodic tour through an extraordinarily
complicated and diverse institution as it advances through the moments, hours and days
of a typical week. As in most workplaces, those hours can be filled with routine and repetition. As in most hospitals, they involve the potential for tragedy and the opportunity
for triumph. But, on a scale that is rarely encountered, this is a place where remarkable
things happen with some regularity. Where small, clever notions, innovations, discoveries and kindnesses can pile up through the course of a day. Where people with very
different thoughts regularly share them, polishing and reshaping their ideas by bouncing them off of each other and testing them in unexpected ways until they gain enough
weight and consequence to become the new way, the way things will be done here from
now on, and eventually how they will be done everywhere else.
2006 ANNUAL REPORT : 3
The University of Chicago has long had a reputation as a source of such big, worldchanging ideas. It is the birthplace of sociology, of nuclear energy, of organ
transplantation and of new forms of cancer therapy. But large thoughts, according to
writer Nicholson Baker, “depend more heavily on small thoughts than you might think.”
Each thought, he says, has a size. Most are “about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine.”
What we find constantly surprising at the University of Chicago is the sheer number of
these moderately complex, three-foot-tall thoughts, the thousands of creative techniques that Medical Center staff—physicians, nurses and everyone else—invent on a
daily basis to make diagnosis, treatment and recovery better. These may be little things,
small touches that make surgery smoother, or medications more effective, or help
patients feel more comfortable during what could be a very challenging time.
Of course, here and there we saw bigger ideas at work. “Once in a while,” Baker says, “a
thought may come up that seems, in its wooly, ranked composure, roughly the size of
one’s hall closet.” Those thoughts travel quickly. They turn up in the morning paper or
on the evening news. In the past year, physicians and scientists from our institution
made landmark discoveries about the evolution of life on our planet, the genetic
changes that have made humans so different from their distant ancestors and how other
organisms, such as the bacteria that prey on humans, have learned to keep pace.
This tendency to think about old problems in new ways, to cross academic boundaries
and produce closet- and even kitchen-sized ideas, attracts a different sort of welcome
attention—people who want to hasten and share in the discovery process. In the first
four months of 2006, four huge gifts, in the eight-figure category, helped to set the
stage for a series of future discoveries. All four were crucial, but perhaps the most
remarkable, a $42 million donation to help make Comer Children’s Hospital bigger and
better, came from Lands’ End founder Gary Comer, a local boy with a heart as big as a
house who made a fortune by focusing on the details. Sadly, after a long illness, Gary
died in October. We miss him more than we can say.
But his ideas and inspiration will live on in all the things we do, large and small. That
legacy includes a piece of advice that he was famous for telling his staff, and which
applies just as well, at any given moment, to those at an academic medical center.
“Worry about being better,” he said. “Bigger will take care of itself.”
Valerie B. Jarrett
Chair, University of Chicago Medical Center Board of Trustees
James L. Madara
Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Chicago
Chief Executive Officer, University of Chicago Medical Center
Monday
9:17 AM
This morning
there are no children
crying in the third-floor cardiac intensive care
unit (CICU) in the University of Chicago Comer
Children’s Hospital. Although 10 beds wrap in a
U-shape of muted pastels around the central
desk, and every bed embraces a child, the only
noises come from the physicians and nurses as
they travel between patient beds and consult
one another about medications or recent
occurrences.
The unit is quiet today because the children
here are so sick. Many are either sedated or
unconscious. It’s also because in Comer, the
new $135 million facility—two-and-a-half
times the space of the previous children’s hospital—individualized pagers and wireless
phones have replaced the standard overhead
paging system traditionally used in hospitals.
Phineas Oren, MD, is the attending physician
this week, and his work at the University of
Chicago Medical Center is multi-layered. In
addition to seeing patients, Oren teaches medical students, directs the training program for
pediatric ICU fellows and is developing a resuscitation curriculum. Today, he’ll spend most of
his shift, which sometimes lasts 16 hours, conducting physical exams and the rest of his time
re-checking medications and keeping on top of
paperwork.
Oren begins with a tiny 18-month-old girl who
lies in one of the CICU’s four private rooms—
her shiny black hair in pigtails, her eyes closed,
her heart failing.
These rooms are reserved for patients with
unusually long hospital stays, “so the families
can be comfortable since they’re going to be
here a long time,” Oren says, or for patients
who require isolation or quiet that the bay of
beds in the CICU doesn’t always provide.
A feeding tube, taped to the right side of the
girl’s body, leads directly into her stomach. A
ventilator helps her breathe. In addition to
congestive heart failure, she was born with
situs inversus, which means the organs in her
chest and abdomen are reversed, left to right,
mirroring where they should be. She also has a
defective spleen, which means she needs
antibiotics to prevent infections that others
fight off naturally.
Due to daily treatment, the toddler has grown
tolerant to her pain medications and requires
higher and higher doses. “It’s a big challenge
to keep her comfortable and still,” Oren says.
Physicians have paralyzed her muscles to keep
her from tugging on the tubes and lines coming from her mouth, nose, chest and stomach.
“These patients are some of the sickest in the
hospital, with very complicated problems,” Oren
10:04 AM
Pediatrician Phineas Oren discusses a patient’s improvements
over the past hour at the nurses’ station in the Comer cardiac
intensive care unit. A child’s health status can unexpectedly
falter at any moment in the ICU. As the attending physician
today, it’s Oren’s job to keep track of all children in the unit’s
10 beds.
3:34 PM
says. “I talk with probably 20 different doctors
a day. It’s vital that we coordinate care.”
As Oren leaves the girl’s room, he runs into
pediatric critical care fellow Chris Montgomery,
MD, who splits his time between caring for
patients in the hospital and studying deadly
infectious diseases. They discuss the best plan
of action with respect to the girl’s pain medications. Oren then moves on to his next patient.
He’s helping these children fight for another
chance at a healthy life. Yet, with every decision he makes, Oren wields a double-edged
sword. “Everything I do to save someone’s life
has a chance of killing them too,” he says.
“Nothing I do has zero risk.”
While Oren is making his rounds,
Michelle Obama, Vice President for Community
and External Affairs, scurries between meetings. Her job involves “keeping community
affairs at the front of [her] mind and funneling
through information [she’s] hearing from the
ground troops,” she says.
This morning, she and other vice presidents discussed hospital expansion. After that, she met
with a community member who serves on the
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) board.
They discussed research on the expansion of the
16 South Side community-based health centers
that partner with the Medical Center to offer
people preventive care before medical conditions
get so extreme that people end up in the
already-congested Chicago ER. Now she’s off to a
meeting about business diversity.
By late afternoon, after hours of meetings,
Obama has returned to her office. Family photos take front row to the dense shelves of
sociology and law books beside her desk. Her
children’s drawings fill the marker board
behind her.
Under Obama’s leadership, the Medical
Center’s involvement with and support of
minority- and women-owned businesses has
risen to 40 percent—15 percentage points
higher than the city’s minority goals and 35
percentage points higher than its women-
4:35 PM
Vice President Michelle Obama speedwalks down the long, empty hallway
that leads to the Legal Affairs Office.
She’s on her way to one of many daily
meetings that will help shape the
Medical Center’s community presence.
owned goals. The number of hospital volunteers has also more than doubled in the past
two years. And Obama is constantly working on
the South Side Health Collaborative, which,
after a year of establishing relationships
between the Medical Center and various neighborhood health centers, has found primary
care “medical homes” at nearby clinics for more
than 1,200 patients, substituting routine preventive measures for emergency care.
This project seems especially close to Obama—
a South Side native who grew up unaccustomed
to regular physical check-ups. “The Medical
Center can’t be everything,” she says, referring
to how people make frequent trips to the ER
because no one in the family has a personal doctor. Without routine care, nagging health issues
mount and warning signs go unheeded. Soon
little problems become genuine emergencies.
Obama says the Medical Center’s reputation for
excellence is partially at fault. Many people
don’t trust their neighborhood clinics. “We’ve
been able to survive like an island,” Obama
says, “but now the world is seeping in, and our
salvation will be the success of our partners.”
More than 1,000 community-based FQHC health
centers exist across the country, serving 11 million patients, nearly half of whom are uninsured.
Obama’s goal is to connect people in the community with doctors at these centers, to let
them know that they can use those physicians
on a regular basis instead of ignoring symptoms
until they send them to the ER, where care can
cost five times more than at an FQHC.
Once patients’ emergencies are resolved, ER
social workers and patient advocates, currently
funded by a Healthy Communities Access
Program (HCAP) grant, help patients find medical homes near where they live.
“Now we’re working together to get people to the
right place,” Obama says, “to make sure everyone stays generally healthy with routine care.”
10:01 PM
Around a few corners and down a
couple of corridors from Obama’s office, social
worker Rebecca Streifler is doing exactly that.
While other parts of the Medical Center may see
rises and falls in activity levels throughout a
typical day, the emergency room at Chicago is a
guaranteed source of constant commotion.
Each of the ER’s three sections (two for adults,
one for children) has a bank of computers and
desks where clinicians review patient charts,
gather information, call for translators… .
Through the turbulence, however, Streifler
stays focused on what she has to do.
As a social worker covered by an HCAP grant,
Streifler visits with ER patients after they’ve
seen a doctor. A typical workday could involve
assessing a 2-year-old’s safety, intervening in a
teenager’s personal crisis, screening a 40-yearold for drugs and alcohol and setting up
homecare for an elderly patient. Above all else,
she’s there to listen.
10:09 PM
In the pediatric ER, social
worker Rebecca Streifler stops
to say hello to a giggling
3-year-old girl who bounces
on her bed. The young patient
caught Streifler’s attention
with a catcall of “Hey, baby!”
she’d been using on all
passers-by.
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
Across the street from the ER,
human genetics professor Jonathan Pritchard
sits in his office in the Life Science Center
proofreading a paper he and his team are about
to submit for publication. This study piggybacks
one published early this year after the scientists scanned the human genome in search of
genetic variations that could signal recent evolution. Pritchard and his team found more than
700 possible genetic variants.
“There have been a lot of recent changes over
the past 10,000 years—the advent of agriculture,
shifts in diet, new habitats, climatic conditions,”
Pritchard says. “This approach allows us to take
a broad perspective to see what kinds of biological systems are undergoing adaptation.”
And she’s heard a lot. Streifler has worked at
the Medical Center for four years. She spent
the first two and a half exclusively in the pediatric ER. Now she alternates between pediatrics
and adults.
Streifler has seen more than 20 patients since
she arrived for her shift 12 hours ago. There’s
no limit as to how much time a given patient
will require, and there’s an older couple in one
of the curtained rooms that she has yet to see.
Streifler finds the chart on the counter and
parts their curtain. A man sits propped up in
bed. He fell earlier today, and Streifler wants
to find out if the couple wants homecare to
help with daily chores, hygiene or whatever
else they might need.
The man is quiet and serious, but can’t help but
break a bit of a smile at Streifler’s encouraging
words. Her voice is soft, friendly and optimistic, like a kindergarten teacher’s.
As they chat, the man’s wife laughs, and her
smile takes over her whole face. Apparently the
man’s fall was an isolated mishap, not the
result of dizzy spells or loss of balance. They
tell Streifler they don’t need anyone to visit
their home. Before Streifler leaves, she offers
them an information pamphlet. The couple
accepts it for future reference and thanks her.
Jim Walter, MD, Section Chief of Emergency
Medicine, says the social workers’ impact has
“changed our ER dramatically. They’re doing
exactly what the Medical Center needs.”
In a place that can be extremely intimidating,
Streifler offers a helping hand and a smiling
face. But for now, she’s ready to head home.
The data the scientists analyzed were collected
by the International HapMap Project and consisted of genetic data from 209 unrelated
individuals who are grouped into three distinct
populations: 89 East Asians, 60 Europeans and
60 Yorubans from Nigeria. The researchers found
roughly the same number of signals of positive
selection within each population. They also
found that each group shares about a fifth of the
signals with one or both of the other groups.
Among the signals found were previously
known sites of recent adaptation, such as the
salt-sensitive hypertension gene and the lactase gene, which enables the digestion of milk
to continue into adulthood. This lactase mutation appeared in approximately 90 percent of
Europeans, making it the strongest signal in
the genome hunt.
11:58 AM
Tuesday
During rounds for the lung-transplant team, nurses Vicki Fron and Penny
Pearson talk with pulmonologist Sangeeta Bhorade outside the room of
their first transplant patient since their move to the Medical Center.
11:47 AM
Standing beside
the first
patient she’s cared for since the lung transplant
team moved to the University of Chicago last
November, pulmonologist Sangeeta Bhorade,
MD, shakes her head. None of this is new to her.
The team’s first transplant was in 1988. Since
then, the same team of physicians, nurses,
transplant coordinators and case managers has
performed nearly 500 transplants and now is
working to build a patient base in a new location. The team already has 30 patients in various
stages of the process leading up to a transplant.
“Are you okay?” Bhorade asks Allen Leonard,
44. He has been a personally endearing but
technically challenging patient. A former
Chicago policeman, Leonard suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, caused by scleroderma, a
particularly difficult disorder for transplantation. But he has recovered well after his—at
least clinically. This morning he seems a little
out of sorts, grumpy and sullen when he should
be eager to show off his recovery, to get out of
the ICU and go home. “We want to have to hold
you back from running out of here,” says
Bhorade, medical director of the program.
Instead, Leonard stares out of the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, which provides a clear view of the
ICU, and the ICU a clear view of him. He’s been
frowning since the team entered his room.
Bhorade rubs his shoulder before leading everyone out of the room.
At the ICU’s central station just across from the
patient’s room, Bhorade and the team discuss
the source of Leonard’s distress. His lungs are
fine, but his mood, at this moment, is not. One
of the nurses mentions that he may feel on display because of the windowed-wall that enables
caregivers to look in on him. “He is a very
autonomous guy,” Bhorade says. “I’d feel the
same way.”
Giving Leonard a new pair of lungs, the transplant team has solved his core problem. Now the
team hatches a strategy for his peripheral concern. Nurse Vicki Fron returns to his room. She
consults with the attending nurse, who then
pulls his drapes closed, blocking views from
both sides, allowing for some privacy. Leonard’s
distress, possibly amplified by his medications,
slowly resolves itself. Within two weeks, he and
his new lungs are on their way home.
12:10 PM
In most situations that require flight, transplant
coordinator Ozzie Rivero takes a Lear jet with “lifeguard status”—allowing it to land anywhere at any
time. Rivero’s safe arrival today in the UCAN helicopter gives a patient another chance at life after
waiting on the transplant list for a new heart.
12:02 PM
As Bhorade returns to her
office, procurement coordinator Ozzie Rivero
rushes into the operating room carrying an icepacked cooler. Inside, wrapped in three plastic
bags, is a heart that Rivero flew to Tennessee to
collect, but it could just as well have held a set
of lungs. In the case of this donor, the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
obtained the lungs, and a team from Vanderbilt
Hospital in Tennessee took the kidneys.
Rivero is under a tight deadline. Hearts last
only four to five hours outside the body. Since
his pager went off at 1 a.m., he has been on
the move: calling the surgeons who will harvest the heart, the operating room staff and
Aerocare, the medical transportation company
that provides the Chevrolet Suburbans, heli-
copters or Lear jets that enable the transplantation. “We’re really the linchpin that holds
everything together,” he says.
Rivero is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, every other week. Angel Rivera, another
procurement coordinator, covers the alternate
weeks. The typical burnout time for coordinators is 24 months, probably due to the hours
and the emotion that fuels their work. Rivero
and Rivera, however, have been coordinating
procurements for more than nine years. They’ve
seen a lot over that time and know that there
exists “a huge disparity between people needing and people donating,” Rivero says.
Between procurements, which may happen
every few days or every couple weeks, the coordinators work with Gift of Hope in Elmhurst,
Ill., to encourage people to register as donors.
In Illinois, the Organ Procurement and
Transplantation Network currently lists nearly
5,000 people waiting for a kidney, liver, pancreas, heart, lung or intestine. Rivero and
Rivera will play a vital part in helping many of
those people move off that list and on to
healthier lives.
1:07 PM
1:02 PM
The atmosphere in Margaret
Tobin’s office is distinctly less urgent than that
in the operating room. Soon enough, however,
the decisions she makes as Director of
Operational Planning, Design and Construction
will affect the surgeons currently hard at work.
Tobin holds weekly meetings with surgery and
anesthesia working groups to help her and the
design team tailor the plans for Chicago’s new
hospital pavilion to suit their needs.
As they enter the American School, which sits between Comer and Mitchell
and is now being renovated, surgeons turn toward a second-floor room to
discuss a construction project of their own-the new hospital pavilion-and
the design specifications they'll need to make it work.
“We’re working with some of the most interesting people because they’re smart, they care
about quality and they excel at what they do.
Meetings can get very intense,” says Tobin,
who also helped plan the Comer Children’s
Hospital and the Duchossois Center for
Advanced Medicine. “It’s a lot of work just
combing through the details, making sure
nothing gets lost in translation.” In addition to
meeting with surgeons and anesthesiologists,
Tobin also spends Wednesday, Thursday and
Friday of most weeks conferring with radiologists, nurses and gastroenterologists, as well
as other people from various ends of the
Medical Center, including those from Support
Services. “In three days you really get to see a
cross-section of the Medical Center and come
to understand the workings of functional
health care,” she says.
The new pavilion will add 500,000 square feet
to the Medical Center, increasing capacity by
more than one-third. Opening in 2011, it will
stand 10 stories tall and two blocks wide on
57th Street between Cottage Grove and Drexel
Avenues, adjacent to DCAM and Comer.
Tobin spends her days planning that future.
“We’re always raising the bar for better patient
care,” she says. “It’s all about efficiency, circulation and flow. So much of the Medical
Center’s vision and mission are tied up in the
new building.”
5:15 PM
Of all the patients in the Medical
Center, the ones with whom Maria Kalifa works
come from farthest away and possess some of
the most serious ailments. Kalifa began at
Chicago six years ago as part of Physicians
Services. Among her many other responsibilities, she was the liaison for the Medical
Center’s only international patient. But as the
international program grew, so did the number
of patients. Now, Kalifa directs a four-person
team that helps coordinate care for approximately 70 patients each month, 45 percent of
whom travel to the Medical Center from Persian
Gulf countries. Ten Arabic-speaking and two
Spanish-speaking translators work with her.
Kalifa, originally from Lebanon, speaks fluent
Arabic, along with French and English, and
she’s using Arabic today as she stops by Tareg
Alawadh’s room to see how he’s doing.
Alawadh came to the United States from
Kuwait. He knows enough English to get by
when he’s interacting with his physicians and
nurses, but opts for Arabic as soon as Kalifa
enters his room.
On April 2, Alawadh underwent a triple organ
transplant at Chicago—heart, kidney and pancreas. Although 95 percent of cadaver organs
must go to U.S. citizens, regulations allow one
out of 20 donated organs to be used to help
those from abroad. Alawadh originally came to
the States for a heart transplant; however,
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
Hundreds of miles away,
in laboratories overlooking the Potomac River
in Virginia, researchers are preparing their labs
and working on ways to attract the graduate
students who will arrive next fall.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute opened
the Janelia Farm campus in early October. By
this time next year, the University of Chicago,
Cambridge University in England and Janelia—
a 281-acre research campus—will have
collectively welcomed a few carefully selected,
highly motivated students from around the
world into a research partnership that joins the
three institutions and enables students from
the two universities to earn their PhDs in a
remarkable new setting.
when physicians here conducted further
exams, they discovered that Alawadh’s diabetes had affected his kidneys and pancreas to
the point that they, too, needed replacement.
One month after the surgery, Alawadh’s daughter sits on the foldout bed next to his in the
hospital room. She’s 13 years old with large
hazel eyes and short black hair. For now, the
dark cloth wrapped around her head falls over
her shoulders. Toothy grins take over her face
as she laughs and pokes fun at her father while
he praises his caregivers and questions Kalifa
about his embassy’s financial aid.
Kalifa tells him that she is traveling to
Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “Don’t worry, I
will address it there,” she says, regarding the
financial issue. “I do regular trips to D.C. to
acquaint myself with the embassies,” she adds.
In the coming months, she will also help the
Alawadhs find temporary housing in Chicago
and introduce them to what will become their
major social support network: the more than
20 other Kuwaiti families also at the Medical
Center for care. “Chicago is a better place
because of her,” Alawadh says.
Moments later, when a group of male physicians knocks on the door to check on Alawadh,
Kalifa asks them to wait while the daughter
covers her head. The covering is a vital part of
the Alawadhs’ culture, something Kalifa must
understand in order to do her job, making the
patients feel at home when they are, in fact,
thousands of miles away. “Maria,” Alawadh
says, “she is like family to me.”
From the sounds of it, Kalifa considers her
patients family too. “Every day is new, and every
patient is different,” she says. “People think it’s
strange because I love my job so much. But I
think that’s the way to be successful—to feel
passionate about and love what you do.”
The partnership between the University of
Chicago and HHMI will be administered through
Chicago’s new Interdisciplinary Scientist
Training Program. The program will grant jointly trained students the PhD in biology. These
students will enjoy a novel interdisciplinary
environment that will connect Janelia’s “thinktank” campus with Chicago’s prestigious faculty
and create opportunities for joint projects.
Access for graduate students comes only
through the University of Chicago or
Cambridge. Because HHMI will completely fund
the scientists who will use the campus, the
researchers will be free to follow any leads they
may uncover rather than adhering to strict
requirements imposed by grant funding.
Wednesday
8:17 AM
The Wyler lobby smells more like
a country kitchen at sunrise than a sterile hospital building this morning. That’s because in a
conference room just beyond the lobby, people
from the Office of Volunteer Services are
uncovering steaming platters of eggs,
sausages, biscuits and bacon. Colored leis hang
from their necks and wrap around their
ankles. A stack of hula hoops leans against
one wall, and Bob Marley’s “Is This Love?” rings
from corner speakers.
The office hopes to bring a little piece of the
tropics to the University of Chicago in celebration
of the Medical Center’s dedicated group of 633
volunteers, who run the gamut of ages between
16 and 85. These volunteers do everything from
cuddling babies and playing with children to
greeting patients and assisting in the ER.
“Volunteerism here is really two-sided: bringing people in to improve quality care and
sending doctors and nurses out to schools, gardens, churches and elsewhere in the
community,” says Leif Elsmo, Director of
Volunteerism. “The South Side’s not such a faraway place once you’ve planted a garden in
Woodlawn. Our theory is that the only way to
build trust is through interaction.”
Once the room is decorated, Beverly Billy,
Manager of Volunteerism, grabs a bag of leis
and heads for the door to welcome the volunteers who are waiting in the lobby. One of those
volunteers is Addie Matten. She remembers the
exact date she began volunteering as a foster
grandmother at the Medical Center: July 6,
1998. Since then, she’s spent four hours a day,
five days a week holding, feeding, rocking,
reading and playing with some of Chicago’s tiniest patients. “I love holding them,” she says.
“My energy comes from them.”
There’s also Carla Velazquez. She’s quieter than
Matten, who talks and jokes with the other volunteers like long-time friends. Since
September 2005, Velazquez has traveled to the
Medical Center a few times each week. And
while her duties may seem minor—walking
through lobbies to offer patients and families
coffee and her comforting presence—seeing a
friendly face makes an important difference to
people under stress in a place as big and fastpaced as the Medical Center. “It’s the little
touches that make our patients feel better,”
Elsmo says.
Velazquez agrees. “I like when people smile
and say they really appreciate our help,” she
10:23 AM
Volunteer Addie Matten has played grandmother to
hundreds of children during the past eight years,
holding, rocking and feeding babies in the PICU. This
morning, though, she sat around a table with other
volunteers, laughing and enjoying a Hawaiian breakfast the Medical Center organized to say thanks.
1:36 PM
This afternoon,
says. Having moved to the United States from
Peru and speaking Spanish and English fluently, Velazquez occasionally translates for
patients as well.
There are about 20 other volunteers, in addition to Matten and Velazquez, who arrived
promptly at 8 a.m. for their celebratory breakfast. As they file in, Billy smiles and slips leis
around their necks, encouraging everyone to
join in later on the hula-hoop contest.
“This is all about celebrating what you do for
us,” Elsmo says, addressing the volunteers
seated around the long wooden table that
takes up most of the room.
“You guys make it worthwhile for me to get up
and come into work,” office secretary Angela
Thomas continues. “Today, let us cater to you.”
David Frim,
MD/PhD, Section Chief of Pediatric
Neurosurgery, stands with his head lowered
over a table in Operating Room 2 of Comer
Children’s Hospital. Like the volunteers, he’s
committed to what he does. His hands work
quickly, steadily, and the rest of his body
remains still as he draws a rectangle just below
the crown of 12-year-old Christian Collier’s
scalp, drills holes in the rectangle’s four corners and pulls an electronic knife across its
lines. He will peel back the shaved section of
scalp and lift the small fraction of skull, 3-by2 inches perhaps, to expose Christian’s brain.
Frim, with his trademark brown beard and bow
tie, is a major reason Chicago’s name carries so
much weight in the world of pediatric neurosurgery. Children come to the Medical Center
from across the country to see him. Among them
is the now-famous Baylie Owen, a 7-year-old
Texan who has donated more than $100,000 to
Frim for research on the incurable brain disorder
Chiari malformation. Baylie raises the money
through her web site, www.baylieforbrains.com,
where she sells beaded blue bracelets featuring
such words as “cure” and “hope.”
Christian is on Frim’s table today because he
and his family are seeking a cure for his epilepsy. He suffers from multiple seizures daily, and
the epilepsy team wants to pinpoint their origin. “We can remove part of his brain if the
seizures are coming from that one part,” Frim
says. “If they come from all over, we’re stuck.”
He and the team of clinicians will monitor
Christian for about a week before deciding
what to do.
6:08 PM
Neurosurgeon David Frim finishes a four-hour surgery on a
young epilepsy patient. But before leaving for the evening,
Frim needs to see one more patient: a teenager who checked
into Comer on Monday with severe headaches caused by
Chiari malformation—a disease in which the bony space at
the lower rear of the skull is smaller than normal, blocking
the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.
Christian’s surgery lasts three and a half hours.
He is unconscious and covered with sheets.
After Frim exposes the brain, he uses tweezers
to slide each set of electrodes in straight lines
under the remainder of Christian’s skull.
Frim is confident and focused behind the clear
goggles covering his eyes and the teal paper
mask covering his nose and mouth, but he’s
also aware of what’s going on around him—a
dozen nurses, technicians and students who
flow in and out of the room and around the
table. In the midst of it all, he clearly outlines
the steps of the surgery to the handful of medical students shadowing him.
Sara Wiemer is one of those students. She’s in
her third year and is studying to become a
pediatrician. “It’s amazing to see the brain for
the first time,” she says. Though she’s not specializing in neurosurgery, Wiemer says the
experience will help her do her job better. “I
understand the process now and will be able to
explain it to patients,” she says.
Christian’s epileptologist, Michael Kohrman,
MD, is also in the OR with Frim. The two consult
about the precise placement of the electrodes,
which come in thin white strips, with wideband rainbow ribbons for tails that wind down
from Christian’s head and onto the table. With
the electrodes in place, Frim replaces the missing segment of skull, like the last piece of a
puzzle, and pulls the ribbons through the little
circles he had drilled in the rectangle’s four
corners. Wiemer helps him stitch the scalp back
in place. Frim encourages her as she ties each
knot, telling her she’s already a pro.
Frim performs approximately a half dozen surgeries each week and spends the time between
procedures updating records, rounding, teaching and attending conferences. His plate is full.
As soon as his work on Christian is done, Frim
steps out of the room and removes his gloves,
mask and surgical cap. From here, he’s on to a
meeting and then rounds. He arrived at work
before 7 a.m. and won’t get home until well
after 7 p.m. Perhaps when he returns tomorrow, he’ll be at least one step closer to solving
Christian’s problems.
11:10 PM
By the time
the moon outside
Christian’s window in the pediatric intensive
care unit has risen, he’s asleep. White cloths
wrap like a turban around all but the top of his
head, and his swollen eyelids hide his eyes
even when he’s awake.
Christian’s mom, Jacquelyn Collier, is wide
awake. She sits in a chair beside his bed,
watching. She has folded her hands over her
chest and shakes her head as she thinks back
on the years of seizures that have brought
them both to this room.
When she would bathe her son at less than a
year old, he would shiver, she remembers. “I
just thought he was cold,” she says. But one
day she called her sister and told her about
Christian’s shaking, and her sister called an
ambulance. It was then that Jacquelyn discovered that her baby hadn’t been cold after all.
Christian had been having seizures, and
though he has reached the physical age of 12,
his mental age mirrors that of a 3- or 4-year-old.
“He just trusts everybody, and you can’t go
through life like that,” says Jacquelyn praying
that the doctors at Chicago will help her son.
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
While David Frim focuses
on human brains, the ones Peggy Mason, PhD,
studies are significantly smaller.
11:19 PM
Finishing late rounds, doctors check on Christian Collier,
whose eyes are swollen shut following epilepsy surgery.
Half asleep, Christian reaches to the top of his head and
pulls at the ribbons of wires cascading down his back.
His mom is at his bedside to restrain and calm him.
When Chris Clardy, MD, the PICU’s attending
physician, leads a group of about 10 fellows
around the unit’s 18 beds. Jacquelyn raises her
head to listen. Each fellow holds a large binder
of patient notes. As they stop outside a room
to discuss the patient’s health status and medications, they consult those notes, adding to
them with every new decision or update.
Clardy asks the fellows what will encourage
Christian’s seizures so they can get the readings they need to find the source. He waits a
moment before continuing. “Sleep deprivation,” he says. The lack of rest, a likely seizure
instigator, should give Kohrman and Frim the
information they need to help Christian.
Rats make up her laboratory. And within the
past year, Mason, along with research associate
Haley Foo, reported in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences that “OFF” and
“ON” cells in the animals’ ventromedial medulla (VMM) work jointly to allow hunger, thirst
and urination drives to override pain.
This helps even healthy, well-fed rats eat when
a “feed or flee” mindset is present. “Escaping
pain and potential dangers may be important
protective behaviors, but eating, drinking and
eliminating wastes are absolutely essential,”
Mason says.
Mason and Foo conducted the experiment
using adult male rats. They put them in containers with wire mesh floors and delivered
radiant heat to one hind paw. The heat wasn’t
intense enough to cause damage, but was
annoying enough to make the rats move their
paws within seconds.
The rats’ reactions changed, though, with food.
They delayed retracting the heated paw for up
to eight seconds, continuing to eat whether the
reward was standard rat food, chocolate chips,
yogurt drops or butter cookies.
During this time, Mason and Foo discovered,
the animals’ pain-enhancing ON cells were
inhibited and their pain-suppressing OFF cells
were energized. The animals responded similarly while drinking and urinating.
Their findings are huge in the world of neurology, and yet another facet of what is underway
at the Medical Center at any given moment.
Thursday
9:55 AM
As the cameraman adjusts the lights, CBS 2 Chicago
medical reporter Mary Ann Childers and infectious
diseases specialist Robert Daum chat like old friends,
probably because Childers’ health coverage often
leads her to Daum, a prominent researcher who
specializes in Staphylococcus aureus infections.
9:49 AM
“I don’t want to be in a lab again,”
says CBS 2 Chicago medical reporter Mary Ann
Childers, glancing around the University of
Chicago Medical Center’s ER for another location.
Her videographer lugs his camera and lighting
equipment as he walks beside her. The news crew
has come to the Medical Center to interview
Robert Daum, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases
specialist and arguably the world’s leading
expert on community-associated methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA.
This potentially deadly new form of staph infection, resistant to virtually all antibiotics, recently
began showing up in communities.
Childers interviewed Daum about the same subject last fall in his laboratory on the sixth floor
of the Wyler building. Then, Daum’s most wellknown patient, 9-year-old Jewaun Smith, was
barely breathing after the germ and its toxins
almost killed him, eating away tissue leaving
hundreds of holes in his lungs, putting him in a
coma for two and a half months. The infection
overwhelmed Jewaun after he fell and scratched
his leg while biking in his neighborhood.
Jewaun, healthy today, is one of the lucky
ones. CA-MRSA occurs in varying forms, and of
the 14 severe cases Daum has treated, half of
the patients have survived. The first to publish
the description of a cluster of community-associated cases, Daum tells Childers in the
interview, “Staph has figured out how to get
around every antibiotic that’s been brought
onto the market. So what are we going to do?
We’re working on making a vaccine.”
It’s not only Daum’s expertise that triggers
interview requests from media outlets around
the world, including “60 Minutes” and Time
magazine, but it’s also his ability to keep calm
and reasonable, to provide hope in the face of
an infection that, unlike the hypothetical bird
flu pandemic, “is here and now.”
Daum arrives in the ER for the interview full of
apologies for his tardiness. Childers shakes her
head and tells him not to worry. They’ve found
a suitable room for the interview, but will have
to wait until the nurses finish running tests on
a patient there before the crew can settle in.
7:21 PM
The new computer software that radiologist Michael Vannier
uses corresponds with the 64-slice CT scanner. It generates
realistic depictions from the scans and has been changing
the way physicians examine the human body.
7:12 PM
Around the corner from the
11:02 AM
By 11 a.m.,
the interview is over.
While the cameraman packs up his equipment
in the cluttered room, Daum and Childers chat
about work and Daum’s wife’s recent surgery.
Before they leave, Childers decides she wants a
shot of herself and Daum walking down the
hallway, talking. They start at the opposite end
of the bright corridor, and as they walk, members of the Medical Center’s lift team rush past
on their way to a patient’s room.
The lift team was assembled to help bedside
nurses get patients out of bed. The nurses
often would injure themselves by using incorrect positions to elevate overweight patients.
However, with a specially trained team
equipped to transport and lift patients, onthe-job injuries have decreased and overall
patient care has improved.
ER, Michael Vannier, MD, a diagnostic radiology expert, swings his encased laptop over his
shoulder before leaving the radiology reading
room, where he has spent the day interpreting
the 150 CT scans administered within the past
24 hours. Vannier’s laptop contains the same
program that’s on the reading room’s desktop
computers. Powerful, it displays scans and
realistic 3D images from the 64-slice CT scanner, the newest in a 15-year-old line of
scanners with an impact so impressive, its
development has been compared to the discovery of X-ray imaging. Now past 7 p.m., Vannier
has a train to catch and will bring the laptop
with him so he can continue his work.
The 64-slice scanner provides images never
before seen via non-invasive means. “We’re
looking at images from different planes,”
Vannier says. As a result of the new scanner,
his computer shows detailed 3D images of the
heart and its major vessels, as well as how contrast agents move through and around a
tumor, enabling doctors to predict a cancer
patient’s response to treatment instead of simply observing the reactions once they occur.
Technicians run the scanners, which, in half a
second, can complete a 360-degree rotation,
producing 128 images within a full second and
1,000 within the seconds it takes to complete a
full study. “We’re in high demand,” Vannier
says, attributing much of that to the 64-slice
scanner, which features an automated voice
that tells patients, for example, when to hold
their breath. There are six multi-slice scanners
housed throughout the Medical Center, and all
are available 24 hours a day.
When Vannier arrives each morning, he and
other doctors go over the cases from the night
before. By late afternoon, a group of about 10
physicians pulls down a giant screen in the
reading room and discusses particularly difficult or unique cases. “This is going to be one
hell of a surgery,” Vannier had said earlier from
the back of the room as an image of a child’s
face with massive tumor growths appeared on
the screen. The physicians proceeded to discuss
the case—surgery options, post-surgery possibilities… . The group’s feedback will help guide
each individual’s physician in deciding treatment options.
Vannier can’t stop working just because his
hours are over. Not only does he travel the
country, giving talks on radiology procedures
and technology, he also brings the images with
him virtually everywhere he goes, so long as he
has his laptop with him.
8:37 PM
Gynecological oncologist Diane Yamada hurries to patient
Sondra Hannafan’s room for one last daily check-up. When
Hannafan checked into the Medical Center a few days ago
with an adverse reaction to her cancer medication, she
couldn’t identify her husband or the year. Now, keenly
aware of both, Hannafan’s nearly ready to go home.
8:49 PM
Fourteen hours have passed since
Diane Yamada, MD, arrived at the Medical Center,
and it may be another hour before she walks
out the door. She could leave now if she wanted to. Her meetings, which began before 7
a.m., are over; her conference with the other
gynecological oncologists, nurses and social
workers to discuss patient treatment plans
ended nine hours ago; and she has finished
rounding and seeing patients in clinic. But up
on Mitchell’s sixth floor, there is one particular
patient she wants to see one more time today,
just as she has every day since the patient
arrived on Monday.
As Yamada catches an elevator, patient Sondra
Hannafan curls up under the sheet on her bed,
having just returned from two hours in radiology for CT scans of her brain. The retired
teacher-turned-homemaker says she’s not hungry but knows she must eat. Her husband,
Michael, sits on the guest bed, helping her
decide what to order from the menu, which provides inpatients with multiple breakfast, lunch
and dinner options. The one Hannafan ordered
before going to radiology has grown cold.
They can hear Yamada’s tiny heels click-clickclick down the hall. “She’s been with us since
the very beginning,” Michael Hannafan says as
she enters. “We think Dr. Yamada is the great-
est thing since sliced bread.” When his wife was
diagnosed with ovarian cancer in April, the
Hannafans interviewed oncologists at three
teaching hospitals. Despite having to drive
past two of them on the way from their home
on Chicago’s North Shore, the couple chose the
University of Chicago because of Yamada.
They first connected one evening in late April
when Yamada received a call from the
Hannafans and arranged to meet with them the
next morning. After hours together, the three
of them mapped out the possibilities of how to
handle the cancer. Less than a week later,
Hannafan underwent a five-hour hysterectomy
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
Studying the human
brain
requires more than looking at it. It also
requires listening to it. Neuroscientist Nicholas
Hatsopoulos can do more than eavesdrop.
Along with colleagues at Brown University, he
has developed a way to record signals sent out
by large groups of neurons—commands telling
the body how and where to move—and to
translate the orders into a language a computer understands and acts on.
and debulking surgery at Chicago to remove any
detectable tumor. After successful surgery, she
began intraperitoneal chemotherapy, a form of
treatment that injects anticancer drugs through
a tube directly into the patient’s abdomen.
The treatment plan Yamada developed in conjunction with other specialists was
intense—not one, she says, that a patient
would undergo at a smaller community hospital. “It’s important for us to talk about all the
options of chemotherapy,” she says, “and to be
prepared to deal with all their complications.”
Hannafan had been doing fine with the treatment until a Monday in mid-June, when her
husband brought her back to the Medical
Center after she suffered what doctors refer to
as a “change in mental status.” Suddenly
unable to recognize her husband or recall the
year, “she was clearly a different person,”
Yamada says, looking at Hannafan from where
she sits at the foot of her bed. Hannafan
shrugs as the handful of nurses who have
entered her room say how thankful they are
that she’s doing better.
Nephrologist Patrick Murray, MD, enters the
room quietly and stands beside Hannafan’s
bed so he can check her heartbeat and breathing. With a slight Irish accent, Murray tells the
couple that the change in Hannafan’s mental
status may be related to her sodium levels. He
assures them, if it’s an issue with her brain, the
battery of scans she’s just had will surely reveal
that. Yamada is quiet through most of the talk,
but keeps her eyes on her patient.
Once Murray and some of the nurses leave the
room, things are quieter. Yamada pats
Hannafan’s blanketed leg, telling her how
impressed she is with her improvements. It’s
after 9 p.m. now, and Yamada will head home.
Hannafan, however, will stay at least one more
night in the hospital, so the couple turns their
attention back to the menu to order dinner.
The technology is called a brain-computer
interface—BCI for short—and it’s not a new
phenomenon, but it’s only in the past decade
that the technology’s true potential has been
realized. The main thrust today is developing
BCI systems to aid people who are paralyzed by
injury or illness. While these patients’ limbs
may be stilled, studies show that the motor
cortex is not. Hatsopoulos’ team is one of only
about half a dozen university research groups
working on the problem in the United States.
Ten years ago, Hatsopoulos and John
Donoghue, his former postdoctoral advisor at
Brown University, became the first scientists to
teach monkeys how to move a computer cursor
with their minds. Two years ago, they taught a
person to do it—a quadriplegic was able to turn
on a television, check e-mail and wiggle the
fingers of an artificial hand, all with his
thoughts alone. The patient is part of an FDA
clinical trial of the BrainGate system, the product of a company Donoghue and Hatsopoulos
launched in 2000.
In a nutshell, the researchers have found a way
to turn thought into action—without moving a
muscle.
10:55 AM
It’s unclear whether the number of audience
members surpassed organizers’ expectations for
the annual ceremony or if the lobby simply could
not hold any more chairs. Either way, patients,
nurses and other hospital employees spill into
the hallway as Esmerelda Garcia steps up to the
podium to accept the 2006 Patricia H. Morgan
Award for Excellence in Oncology Nursing.
Friday
1:09 PM
10:15 AM
By quarter after 10 Friday
morning, nurses from the oncology ward on
6SW have filled the 25 chairs of the makeshift
lobby just outside their floor’s elevator and
overflow into the hallway beyond the chairs.
The nurses are here to celebrate one of their
own, Esmerelda Garcia, whom they’ve nominated for the 2006 Patricia H. Morgan Award for
Excellence in Oncology Nursing.
The Morgan family has sponsored the award
since 1992. One nurse is honored with the award
each year through nominations from peers. The
award recognizes Patricia Morgan, a registered
nurse for more than 30 years who was diagnosed
with cancer. The University of Chicago is known
for its cancer treatment and compassionate
healing, and these nurses are a large part of
that renowned care for patients and families at
times when they’re most vulnerable.
“The passion and compassion that people bring
to their work makes the difference,” says Jamie
O’Malley, Vice President and Chief Nursing
Officer, addressing the crowd. Garcia, her parents and three sisters sit in the second row of
chairs directly in front of O’Malley. They know
Garcia has won the award. Before she accepts,
however, the other 10 nominees—the most the
award has ever garnered—are recognized.
The crowd explodes in cheers as Garcia stands
to accept her award. Fighting back the tears,
she approaches the podium and wipes her eyes.
“It’s okay Esme. Take your time,” says one of
the nurses from the hall. When Garcia does
speak, her voice is soft, and she expresses her
gratitude in a straightforward way. It’s not
recognition that motivates her, but the
patients who need her.
On the second floor, half a
dozen researchers sit down to their weekly
meeting. David Meltzer, MD/PhD, leads the
group, after having arrived only minutes ago,
out of breath.
Meltzer keeps a busy schedule. As a researcher,
he’s involved in multiple projects. As a hospitalist, he sees inpatients, specializing in their
hospital care. And as an administrator, he
advises junior faculty on their research and fills
his days with meetings—including today’s with
a group of other hospitalists and researchers.
“I look at this group as a team,” Meltzer says.
“It’s a very powerful partnership between
research and quality improvement.” He speaks
quickly, outlining the meeting’s schedule:
research updates until 1:30 p.m., operations
discussion and new employee introductions.
1:15 PM
Physician-researcher David Meltzer visits patients
as one of the Medical Center’s 14 hospitalists, a
physician who directs, manages and coordinates
all diagnostic treatments and processes during a
patient’s hospital stay. Although fairly typical
across Europe and Canada, the concept has gained
popularity only recently in the United States.
As each person takes a few minutes to discuss
the current status of his or her research project,
others jump in with questions or additional
information. Most of the projects focus on
patient care. Meltzer talks about his pain
research, with hospitalist program Associate
Director Chad Whelan, in which inpatients are
given Palm Pilots that beep randomly, signaling
patients to stop and use the Palm Pilots to rate
their pain at that moment.
Meltzer and Whelan believe that more accurate
measures of patients’ hospital experiences will
improve care. The Palm Pilot project is based on
the idea that measures of pain recorded in the
moment are more meaningful than standard pain
measures that ask patients to recall pain experiences in the hospital through a survey after they
return home. “Even if patients are satisfied with
their pain control overall, we know there are
times we could have done better,” Meltzer says.
“We want to be able to identify those times and
test new interventions to improve pain control
throughout the hospital stay.”
Next, Elmer Abbo, JD/MD, talks about his work
on quality of care for patients with pneumonia.
As part of the Medical Center’s response to
Medicare’s new quality of care initiatives, Abbo
works on projects to assess and improve
patient immunization rates against pneumonia. He also studies end-of-life care and is
working with physicians who specialize in geriatric palliative care.
Vineet Arora, MD, Assistant Dean of Students
for Pritzker School of Medicine, briefs the
group on this year’s Training Early Achievers for
Careers in Health (TEACH) Research Program.
The National Institute of General Medical
Science contributes to the program, which
gives a socio-economically and racially diverse
group of Chicago Public School high school students the opportunity to experience clinical
research and encourages them to pursue
careers in the health sciences.
These weekly meetings enable the group to collaborate on ideas, as well as to help each
other. “It’s an integrated system,” Meltzer
says. “We all are learning from each other.”
3:52 PM
3:41 PM
Pharmacist Ann Calandro works within one
of the chemotherapy pharmacy’s three new
hoods. Though they take some getting used
to, the hoods provide more protection on
both sides, for the drugs and the pharmacists preparing them.
The technicians,
pharmacists
and nurses in the outpatient chemotherapy
suite on DCAM’s sixth floor work as a team too.
They’re responsible for the 5,200 chemo doses
that go out monthly to 1,500 patients. The
pharmacy usually starts to wind down around
3 p.m., but today the day has run long. Right
now, for example, there’s a rush order on medication for a 50-year-old woman whose nurse
found her smoking through her tracheotomy in
the bathroom.
Ann Calandro, PharmD, heads the oncology
clinic’s pharmacy. She’s a friendly woman, originally from Texas, who advises the technicians.
As the pharmacy, which has been open since
7 a.m. and will not close until 6 p.m., begins to
see a break in the constant stream of orders
and questions, Calandro alternates between
bagging medications with bright yellow caution
notices and answering physician inquiries that
come in on the Omninote message machine.
The machine sits on the counter on one side of
the room and beeps as it prints receipt-sized
notes. Calandro answers questions from a
physician who wants to know about the compatibility of certain drugs. His inquiries remind
Calandro of something she wanted to tell one
of the nurses, and after she responds, she
heads down the hall to the clinic area.
Located seconds away from the two wings
where outpatients receive chemotherapy, three
rooms compose the pharmacy: one with a computer where Sandra Hou, PharmD, is entering
at least 100 orders and another two where
technicians in masks and white coats prepare
medications. Giant plastic hoods cover the
technicians’ workstations, each hood penetrated by two portals where green tubes lead into
blue gloves on the hood’s interior.
On her way back to the pharmacy, Calandro
runs into nurse Kathy Foley, who asks if a rush
can be put on the drugs for the patient who
persistently escapes to the bathroom to smoke.
“They’re under the hood right now,” Calandro
says. Foley nods a thank you and rushes off.
5:24 PM
Across the Medical Center in
Mitchell, occupational therapist Cheryl Esbrook
and physical therapist Amy Bowers are walking
down the hall with their patient, Jack Zunica.
The act is anything but minor for the 47-yearold, who suffered massive heart failure in
March. Though Zunica’s case is dire, the therapists are up to the challenge.
Both Esbrook and Bowers have worked at the
Medical Center for about three years. And both
specialize in patients with cardiac problems.
This means they see people with a wide range
of issues, because cardiac problems often lead
to other troubles as well. Both therapists are
slender with friendly faces and don’t look
immediately like people equipped to help
grown men who can’t help themselves out of
bed. “It’s knowing where to be, how to stand,”
Esbrook says. “It’s not just brute strength.”
The therapists work with patients who used to
be fiercely independent, like Zunica, who
owned his own landscaping business and spent
his free time boating. They often need to give
pep talks to motivate their patients. They cover
the unit seven days a week, alternating weekends and beginning their eight-hour shifts at
8 a.m. As an occupational therapist, Esbrook
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
Humans and chimpanzees may be
moving farther apart but evolutionary and systems biologists Kevin White and Yoav Gilad are
back together. Gilad did his post-doc in White’s
lab at Yale before coming to Chicago in 2005.
One of the projects that came with him was a
study of the vast differences between humans
and chimpanzees.
If the genes from humans and chimps are
almost 99 percent identical, why are the two
species so different? In the March 9, 2006,
issue of the journal Nature, Gilad and White
showed that the divergence was due more to
changes in gene regulation than differences in
individual genes themselves.
5:38 PM
Therapists Cheryl Esbrook and Amy
Bowers see some of the weakest and
most immobile patients in the Medical
Center. When those patients succeed at
tasks that they never thought possible,
Esbrook and Bowers, like the patients,
gain the motivation to go on.
helps patients get back to their daily care routines, such as combing hair and brushing
teeth. As a physical therapist, Bowers works on
the patients’ overall mobility development. “A
lot of our goals overlap, so we end up working
on everything,” Bowers says.
They’ve gotten to know Zunica especially well,
and joke with him as they challenge him to do
his daily tasks. “Are you finished combing your
hair?” Esbrook asks.
Zunica nods from where he sits at the side of his
bed. His responses now are limited, as he relies
on a tracheotomy to breathe. When he does
speak, his voice comes out in shallow wisps that
Esbrook and Bowers have learned to interpret.
“It doesn’t look like it,” Esbrook says, shaking
her head with a slight smile.
“Are you going to take that?” Bowers asks.
Zunica works a few more seconds, his effort
obvious as he gathers up the energy to swing
his arm up to his head and pull the comb over
just the tips of his brown hair. Once he has finished, Esbrook and Bowers suggest a hallway
walk. Zunica isn’t so sure, but their relentless
encouragement helps get him out of bed and
slowly but surely plod down the hallway—about
10 feet, which is a good four feet more than the
day before.
Esbrook and Bowers have seen a dozen patients
today, traveling to different areas of the
Medical Center around the patients’ schedules.
One man, for example, underwent kidney dialysis in the morning, so they waited until the
afternoon to visit him. Because of Zunica’s
walk down the hallway and back, they’ve ended
their day late, but on a high note. They’ll
return tomorrow to walk with him again, hopefully a little farther and a little faster.
Using novel gene-array technology, they
showed that as humans diverged from their ape
ancestors in the last five million years, genes
for transcription factors—which control the
expression of other genes—were four times as
likely to have changed their own expression
patterns as the genes they regulate.
“When we looked at gene expression, we found
fairly small changes in 65 million years of the
macaque, orangutan and chimpanzee evolution,” Gilad says, “followed by rapid change,
along the five million years of the human lineage, that was concentrated on these specific
groups of genes. This rapid evolution in transcription factors occurred only in humans.”
“The big question,” says Gilad, “is why are
humans so different?” The same team might
find an answer. This summer, White came to
Chicago as the director of the new Institute for
Genomic & Systems Biology at the University
of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.
They both now have offices on the third floor
of Cummings Life Science Center.
Saturday
4:22 AM
Sometimes the sound of a radio or technicians’ laughter fills a
laboratory. But in general, these are some of the calmest areas
in the Medical Center.
4:36 AM
It’s the silence and lack of distractions that encourage Shiwei Duan, PhD, to work
such unconventional hours. The other post-doctoral researchers in Eileen Dolan’s laboratory fill
their shifts by day. Their studies, along with
Duan’s, contribute to the growing genetics
knowledge base that keeps the University of
Chicago at the forefront of cancer research.
In Dolan’s lab, a group of about a dozen postdocs, graduate students and technicians studies
cancer-related genes and how they react to various chemotherapy treatments. The work also
involves identifying metabolic pathways, or
genes associated with the processing of certain
drugs. “It’s a real marriage between pharmacology and genetics,” Dolan says.
Dolan, PhD, whose research projects often cross
disciplinary boundaries, fits in perfectly at
Chicago. One of her favorite things about being
here is the exposure to different types of
research projects, as well as the scientists conducting them. “It’s very conducive [to]
interdisciplinary work,” she says. “You can
bounce ideas off each other, collaborate.”
There’s also an influx of diverse speakers that
comes through. “I always say, I’m just going to
retire and go to talks all day.”
For now, however, there’s still work to be done.
In addition to working with young researchers,
Dolan spends much of her days in front of the
computer polishing grant proposals and submitting research papers, which will help attract more
grants, to fund more research. A few corridors
away from her office on the Medical Center’s second floor, scientists work double-gloved and
behind hoods in the series of sterile rooms that
comprise her lab. The white walls and high-
ceilinged sterility of the rooms don’t completely
rob the lab of personality, though. By day, a tiny
radio fills one room with pop music, as
researchers use some of the most powerful computers on campus.
With virtually the entire lab automated, the scientists rely more on computers to provide
quantitative information instead of making educated guesses. Their experiments are often
fragile and time-sensitive, so researchers give up
free weekends or stay late during the week to
complete them.
No matter the day of week or time of day, the
work continues. Duan may spend his night transferring cells, typing notes or conducting part of
an experiment. As long as he’s surrounded by
silence, he’ll get his work done by the time the
sun rises.
8:47 AM
After receiving an emergency call, UCAN dispatcher
Julie Hart gives pilot Dave DeFauw the okay to liftoff in the helicopter on the Mitchell rooftop. Nurse
practitioners Jane Kirkley and Kim Knox will join
him, scanning the sky along the way for anything
that could interfere with their flight.
7:02 AM
As Duan leaves for the day, the
sky is beginning to clear, and pilot Dave
DeFauw approaches the helicopter stationed
on the Medical Center’s roof. It’s one of more
than 700 medical helicopters in the United
States. Private companies own some, but as its
white letters set against a deep maroon proclaim, this one belongs to the University of
Chicago Aeromedical Network (UCAN).
Two hundred seventy programs such as UCAN
exist across the country. This one began in
1983 with a team of residents, nurses, dispatchers and pilots. Ira Blumen, MD, heads
UCAN and says that the Medical Center introduced the helicopter transport to Chicago,
though transports now have shifted more to
privatized companies.
DeFauw, dressed in a maroon jumpsuit and
dark boots, crosses the plank-like walkway
from the Medical Center’s penthouse to the
helipad. For the next hour, he inspects the helicopter through eyes that call even the
slightest scratch into question. After nine
months of repairs in Texas, the $4 million,
twin-engine Dauphin 2 helicopter—the safest
non-military helicopter on the market—
returned to Chicago early this year.
Though the helicopter is civilian, DeFauw’s a
retired military man whose interest in flight
stems from a staged helicopter rescue he took
part in during a training session. He played a
drowning victim who was rescued by the craft.
From that day on, DeFauw knew he wanted to fly.
“It’s not too bad a way to retire,” DeFauw, who
became one of four UCAN pilots 11 years ago,
says with a slight smile. Transports typically
take him within a 200-mile radius of the
Medical Center.
He continues his inspection of the helicopter, a
routine he goes through at the beginning of
each of his eight-hour shifts. He uses the open
helicopter door to hoist himself up so he can
inspect the mechanics beneath the rotary
wings. It’s a labyrinth of metallic pipes, all of
which make perfect sense to DeFauw.
Once his check there is over, he heads back down
to UCAN’s basement office to wait for someone,
somewhere to make an emergency call.
12:11 PM
Five hours later,
the phone rings.
Dispatcher Julie Hart answers: “UCAN, this is
Julie. How can I help you?” After a few moments,
she hands the phone to nurse Jane Kirkley.
“Air?” Hart asks after summing up the case for
manager Karen Arndt. Arndt nods. Given the
patient’s condition and traffic conditions, the
situation is imminent enough to warrant going
by helicopter.
Across the city, in a western suburb, 23-yearold Yesena Zaragoza sits propped up in a
hospital bed. She’s 31 weeks pregnant with her
fifth child and has gone into pre-term labor.
Despite having more than two months left until
her baby’s anticipated birth, Zaragoza is having
contractions. She needs to be transported to
the Chicago’s maternal-fetal medicine unit, one
of only 10 regional perinatal centers in Illinois.
The perinatal coordinator on the other end tells
Kirkley that Zaragoza is dilated three to four
centimeters. “The picture [the hospital] paints
when they initially call might be completely different from the picture we see at the bedside,”
says Teri Campbell, another flight nurse. Kirkley
decides that the patient might be stable
enough for transport, but she will re-evaluate
her condition at the bedside. She prepares for a
trip that will involve herself, perinatal nurse
practitioner Kim Knox and pilot DeFauw.
Minutes later, as Kirkley waits for the elevator,
she thinks about what equipment she’ll need.
Zaragoza is too far dilated, and despite drugs
that have slowed her contractions to every 14
minutes, the chance that she will deliver while
in transit is low but not nil. “Delivering the baby
is the easy part,” Campbell says. It’s afterward,
she adds, when they may encounter complications. If Zaragoza were to give birth in the
helicopter, the optimal equipment to keep the
premature baby warm wouldn’t be immediately
at hand.
Kirkley raids the cabinets before heading to the
flight deck where DeFauw and Knox are climbing
into the helicopter. The trio adjusts the heavy
helmets that will serve to block outside noise
and provide a way for everyone to communicate
via the speakers and microphones attached.
They fasten their seatbelts.
The flight lasts only six minutes. Upon landing,
the team removes their headgear, and with
careful speed extracts the stretcher. The nurses
and DeFauw, who will help with logistics, travel
through the maze of hallways to the elevator
and then around another half dozen turns until
they reach Zaragoza. Through the entire process
they don’t stop or slow once, having taken the
same route countless times.
Various machines, one issuing a beep every few
seconds, surround Zaragoza. She blinks slowly,
her lids heavy, and her eyes focused on her husband. Before anything else, the nurses check
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
On any given day, University of
Chicago researchers are working with scientists
25 miles southeast of campus at Argonne
National Laboratory, one of the U.S. government’s oldest and largest science and
engineering research laboratories managed by
UChicago Argonne, LLC.
1:15 PM
Yesena Zaragoza is in labor. Though the trip from the suburbs
to the Medical Center may have felt long to her, nurse Jane
Kirkley, part of the UCAN team, evaluated and moved her with
remarkable speed.
the patient to make sure she is prepared for and
can handle the transport. Zaragoza has dilated
only a little more, to a full four centimeters.
They transfer her onto the stretcher.
At the helicopter, the team loads Zaragoza,
with her head toward the front of the aircraft,
opposite of how all patients, except OBs, are
loaded. This enables the crew easier access
should Zaragoza deliver. From this point, the
nurses divide their responsibilities. Knox will
take care of any obstetrics issues, while Kirkley
monitors Zaragoza’s vital signs and infusions.
Kirkley tells her what to expect—that the ride
may be shaky and loud—as Knox positions her
hand on Zaragoza’s side and begins palpitating
her abdominal muscle. For most of the return
trip, Zaragoza closes her eyes. When they’re
open, she focuses on the wall to her right and
looks as though she’s meditating, concentrating on keeping everything about herself—
breathing, pain, heart rate—steady. A smile
accompanies her words, one of the only times
she speaks. She says she plans to name her
baby Jessica.
When the team gets Zaragoza situated in her
new room on the Medical Center’s second floor,
she thanks everyone. The trip was successful,
and to Kirkley’s relief, the baby didn’t come in
transit.
It’s now late afternoon as Kirkley walks back to
her basement office, where she’ll await the next
emergency call.
It’s there that cancer researcher Wei-Jen Tang
and colleagues deciphered the three-dimensional
structure of insulin-degrading enzyme, a promising target for new drugs because it breaks
down not only insulin but also the amyloidbeta protein, which has been linked to the
cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s disease.
In the Oct. 19, 2006, issue of Nature, the
researchers described the structures of insulindegrading enzyme in complex with four of the
proteins it digests: insulin, amyloid-beta,
amylin and glucagon. The team was able to
solve the structures using Argonne’s Advanced
Photon Source.
“The structure of insulin-degrading enzyme
tells us a lot about how it works, which is somewhat unorthodox,” Tang says. “Understanding
how it works gives us clues about how to design
drugs either to inhibit or activate it.”
The structures are exciting because they
suggest ways to develop drugs that could
either speed up or slow down this ubiquitous
enzyme’s activity.
“By introducing small, targeted mutations, we
have already been able to increase the
enzyme’s activity by as much as 40-fold,” Tang
says. “That gives us a blueprint for the next
step, trying to devise a drug that would produce a similar effect.”
Sunday
1:32 AM
It’s usually the sound of children crying that wakes parents in the wee hours of the
morning, but it isn’t Collins Yearwood’s young
daughters who get him up at 1:30 a.m. Sunday.
They are soundly asleep in their beds. Instead,
Yearwood’s pager wakes him. He’s been on call
since Friday for the University of Chicago
Medical Center Public Affairs Office, and
tonight the page comes from the Chicago
Tribune. A reporter wants to know the conditions of three children who were brought to the
Medical Center’s ER from a house fire that
broke out on the city’s West Side.
Because of privacy regulations, Yearwood tells
the reporter that he needs the children’s
names in order to ask for permission from their
parents to release condition reports.
Eventually, the reporter comes up with names.
By then, other reporters are calling too.
After a few phone calls, Yearwood tracks down
a 13-year-old girl in the pediatric intensive
care unit. In critical condition after jumping
4:34 AM
out of a second-story window, she has multiple
fractures and a concussion. Her 3-year-old
cousin will spend his birthday in the Medical
Center’s burn unit, one of only three in the
metropolitan area, getting treated for severe
smoke inhalation and burns over 10 percent of
his body, mostly his left arm and leg. His fivemonth-old sister died of smoke inhalation at
the scene.
Before Yearwood
finds the
3-year-old’s parents in the burn unit to ask
them if they want to speak to the press—as it
turns out, they do—young Noe Torres already
has had a lot of medical attention. Firemen
carried him from the burning house, and paramedics quickly inserted a tube through his
mouth down into his lungs to keep his airway
open. When he arrives at the burn unit, the
8:04 AM
Nurses in the burn unit see some of the most critically ill
patients. They just sent 3-year-old Noe Torres to the OR for
skin grafts and a closer look at his damaged lungs. Torres
was rushed to the hospital for burns on his left arm and
leg from a house fire early this morning.
staff, in purple scrubs under yellow gowns,
surrounds him. They connect the breathing
tube to a mechanical ventilator and insert a
central line into his chest to control his fluids
and an arterial line into his right arm to monitor his blood pressure. Before long, he has a
half dozen lines dripping fluids into his tiny
body, including antibiotics and drugs for pain
and sedation. As one team cleans, debrides
and evaluates Noe’s burn wounds, another
team asseses his lung injury. The early signs
are not good. The evidence—soot around and
in the mouth, elevated carboxyhemaglobin—
suggests prolonged exposure to thick smoke.
Soon, Noe is cleaned up, his wounds are
dressed, wrapped and protectively splinted,
and his bed is surrounded by numerous devices
that monitor his progress and perform crucial
tasks. He’ll soon go to the OR for skin grafts
and a closer look at his damaged lungs, but for
now, he’s stable, immobile, swaddled in soft
cloth and quieted by medications. Although
hard to imagine, in 16 days he’ll leave the hospital and begin rehabilitation. Yearwood,
meanwhile, returns a few phone calls, then
heads back home.
2:03 PM
As neurosurgery patient
Christian Collier naps, his mom dozes in a chair
next to his bed. Outside his room, Connie
Tribble from Environmental Services brings her
cart of cleaning supplies to a halt. She grabs
fresh trash bags, some paper towels and cleaning solution before entering the room. With
soft steps, she wipes down Christian’s counter
top, bathroom fixtures and window. Then she
empties his wastebaskets into the bin on her
cart and inserts the new bags before leaving.
2:17 PM
Neurosurgeon David Frim typically spends 12 hours in
the Medical Center each day. His youngest son talks
about someday becoming a heart surgeon because,
Frim says, he likes the sound of a beating heart.
8:51 PM
Christian will leave this room too, but not until
early tomorrow morning when a Patient
Transport staff member takes him back down to
the third floor for his surgery. The electrodes
that neurosurgeon David Frim implanted earlier
in the week enabled epileptologist Michael
Kohrman and the team to pinpoint the
seizures, and tomorrow, in an operation that
begins at 7:30 a.m., Frim will remove that tiny
section of Christian’s brain in hopes of alleviating most, if not all, of his seizures.
On this Sunday afternoon, however, Frim is at
home with his family, and the Medical Center is
relatively calm. When his alarm goes off tomorrow morning, he and Christian will begin
preparing for a few hours in the operating room
that will hopefully change Christian’s life for
the better.
Elysia Mogler’s flight from
Denver got in about 15 minutes ago. She flew
nearly 900 miles to see Stephen Hanauer, MD,
one of the country’s leading gastrointestinal
specialists.
In 1997, Mogler’s physicians diagnosed her
with Crohn’s disease, an inflammation of the
digestive tract. Since then, her disease has
progressed to the point where she suffers from
chronic pain, which is why her Denver physician referred her to Hanauer. “I’m very
optimistic,” Mogler says. “I’ve seen some of
the top doctors in the country, and they highly recommend the University of Chicago. These
doctors know what they’re doing.”
So this afternoon, Mogler, in a blue tank top
and with her red hair pulled back, boarded a
plane for Chicago. She says the hardest part of
leaving was saying goodbye to her 4-year-old
son, Gabriel Michael, named after two Biblical
archangels. Gabriel came into her life as a surprise. She hadn’t initially realized she was
expecting because she attributed her recent
weight gain to previous surgery she underwent
for her disease.
9:09 PM
Steven Hanauer, a world-renowned gastroenterologist,
taps his fingers against a patient’s abdomen, listening
for hollowness. For the past 15 years, the University of
Chicago digestive disorders program has been ranked
among the top 10 in the nation in U.S. News & World
Report’s annual survey of best hospitals.
AT THE FOREFRONT
OF RESEARCH
When her cell
phone rang last
fall, Funmi Olopade had just begun a lab meeting. She said she would call back. When she
did, she learned she had been named a
MacArthur Fellow for 2005, which meant
$500,000 in “no-strings-attached” support
over the next five years.
“As we talked,” she says, “it just got nicer and
nicer. Then I had to go back to the lab, pretend
nothing had happened and finish the meeting
without spilling the news.”
Olopade was selected for “translating findings
on the molecular genetics of breast cancer in
African and African-American women into innovative clinical practices in the United States
and abroad.”
As a co-director of the University of Chicago
Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities
Research, Olopade and colleagues Martha
McClintock and project director Sarah Gehlert
explore the multiple possible causes of breast
cancer—everything from genetics to social
stress. The goal is to understand why so many
African-American women get breast cancer at
an early age.
At 27 years old, Mogler is on disability. She
often feels sick to her stomach. And although
she avoids spicy foods and raw vegetables,
she’s tempted to try a real Chicago deep-dish
pizza. But she knows she shouldn’t, because
tomorrow she’ll meet with a world-renowned
physician. Hanauer and his colleagues are
responsible for the University of Chicago digestive disorders program being ranked year after
year among the top 10 in the nation in U.S.
News & World Report’s Honor Roll of best hospitals. This year it’s ranked sixth. Knowing that
brings Mogler confidence, a sort of security blanket draped over the years of discomfort, anxiety
and deprivation caused by her disease. Too much
deprivation, she thinks. So 12 hours before the
appointment that she traveled over four states to
keep, she enjoys her first taste of Chicago deepdish—hold the pepperoni of course.
The research team works closely with community members in Chicago—and women in Nigeria.
They have already found that breast cancers in
women of African ancestry often produce a different pattern of gene expression from that
seen in Caucasians. The next step is to develop
a global strategy to reduce the death, disfigurement and disability caused by breast cancer
in young women at high risk worldwide.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, at any given moment, faculty and staff, clinicians and scientists, healers and researchers alike, uphold the University of Chicago’s presence at the forefront of medicine—pushing
boundaries and going beyond expectations. They create a unique environment where medical breakthroughs, innovative research and patient-centered care change lives and define the institution.
The University of Chicago Medical Center
AT THE FOREFRONT OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
This was a year of change and
accomplishment at the University of Chicago
Medical Center. There were the usual advances:
an ongoing parade of fundamental discoveries,
of patients restored to wholeness and of young
genius carefully nurtured.
But this also has been a year of organizational
discovery, of restored institutional unity and of
budding innovation—also carefully nurtured. In
an effort to bring biomedical research, education and patient care at the University of
Chicago and its hospitals closer together, the
boards of trustees agreed in June to concentrate leadership of the entire biomedical
enterprise under a single chief executive.
James L. Madara, MD, who has been serving as
dean of the Biological Sciences Division and
the Pritzker School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs since July 2002, took
on the expanded role, effective July 1, 2006.
As dean and Medical Center CEO, Madara now
works closely with the University president and
a newly created nine-member Medical Center
Executive Committee, which includes University
President Robert Zimmer, Dean Madara, James
Crown and Valerie Jarrett—the chairs of both
the University and the Medical Center boards—
and five selected board members.
Academic health centers live at the boundary
between science and medicine. They cross back
and forth between the cautious and deliberative culture of a university and the fast-paced,
market-based economy that increasingly dominates health care. This adjustment was
designed to bring unity, clarity and responsiveness to a system that has to straddle that
divide.
Madara is “the right person to lead Chicago
Medicine at this critical time,” President Zimmer
says. “He has demonstrated the ability to
recruit exceptional faculty and physicians and
build leading clinical and research programs.”
Also in June, Valerie Jarrett was appointed
chair of the University of Chicago Medical
Center Board, chair of a newly created
Executive Committee of that board and vice
chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. Her
appointment coincides with an expanded role
for the former Hospitals Board to include not
just the activities of the Hospitals but also clinical-medical programs located in the
University’s Biological Sciences Division.
Because these programs jointly comprise the
University of Chicago Medical Center, the
Hospitals Board will now be known as the
University of Chicago Medical Center Board.
Jarrett is managing director and executive vice
president of the Habitat Company, a real estate
development and management company. She
has been a member of the University of
Chicago’s Board of Trustees since 2001 and vice
chair of the Hospitals Board since 2002. She
succeeded Paula Wolff, who served as chair of
the Hospitals Board for 10 years.
Jarrett served for eight years in city of Chicago
government posts, including deputy chief of
staff for Mayor Richard Daley and commissioner of the Department of Planning and
Development. She was chair of the Chicago
Transit Board, and is currently board chair of
the Chicago Stock Exchange and executive
council vice chair of Metropolis 2020.
A lifelong resident of Chicago’s South Side,
Jarrett also has close ties to the University and
the Medical Center. She attended the
University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools,
where her mother, Barbara Bowman, taught
while earning a graduate degree in education.
Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, is professor
emeritus in the departments of Pathology and
Medicine and the College.
The University of Chicago
Medical Center Board
2006-2007 Board of Trustees
The University of Chicago
Medical Center, Division of
2006-2007 Officers
Leadership
JAMES L. MADARA, MD
Sara and Harold Lincoln Thompson
Distinguished Service Professor
MARTIN FEDER, PhD
Faculty Dean of Academic Affairs
Valerie B. Jarrett
Thomas A. Reynolds III
Paul F. Anderson
Richard P. Saller (ex officio)
Robert H. Bergman
Jeffrey T. Sheffield
Edward McC. Blair, Jr.
Jorge A. Solis
Ellen Block
John A. Svoboda
Otis W. Brawley, MD
Michael Tang
Deborah A. Bricker
Christina M. Tchen
Kevin J. Brown
J. Richard Thistlethwaite, MD
(ex officio)
CEO, University of Chicago
Medical Center
James C. Tyree
DAVID S. HEFNER
Medical Center President
John Bucksbaum
Frank M. Clark
James S. Crown (ex officio)
Allison S. Davis
Craig J. Duchossois
James S. Frank
Stanford J. Goldblatt
Rodney L. Goldstein
Linda H. Heagy
Terry L. Van Der Aa
Kelly R. Welsh
Bruce W. White
Paula Wolff
Robert J. Zimmer (ex officio)
Life Trustees
William J. Hunckler III
Marshall Bennett
Jeffrey D. Jacobs
Lindy Bergman
Kenneth Lehman
Sidney Epstein
Barry L. MacLean
Robert Feitler
James L. Madara, MD (ex officio)
Jules F. Knapp
Dane A. Miller
Howard G. Krane
Ralph G. Moore
John D. Mabie
Christopher J. Murphy III
Marjorie I. Mitchell
Brien M. O’Brien
James T. Rhind
Timothy K. Ozark
Michael Rosenberg
Lance Piccolo
Robert G. Schloerb
Nicholas K. Pontikes
Robert G. Weiss
James Reynolds, Jr.
Dean, Division of the Biological
Sciences and Pritzker School
of Medicine
University Vice President for
Medical Affairs
LAWRENCE J. FURNSTAHL
Chief Financial Officer,
Chief of Strategic Development,
Treasurer
KENNETH P. KATES
Executive Vice President and
Chief Operations Officer
JEFFREY A. FINESILVER
Vice President and Director,
Duchossois Center
for Advanced Medicine
MAYUMI FUKUI
Vice President for Managed Care
HARVEY GOLOMB, MD
Dean of Clinical Affairs
D. ALLAN GRAY
Vice President for Surgical Services
LAURENCE HILL
Assistant Dean of Planning
HOLLY HUMPHREY, MD
Dean of Medical Education and
Chair, Education Committee
VICKIE L. HUMPHREY
Vice President for Support Services
MICHAEL J. KOETTING
Vice President for Planning
BRADLEY D. KOLAR
Chief Learning Officer and
Executive Director, UCH Academy
VINAY KUMAR, MD
Vice Dean, Chair of Pathology
DARLENE LEWIS
Vice President and Chief
Human Resources Officer
THOMAS McGRATH
Vice President and Director,
Comer Children's Hospital
the Biological Sciences & Pritzker School of Medicine
Department Chairs
MICHELLE R. OBAMA
Vice President for Community
and External Affairs
JAMIE M. O’MALLEY
Vice President and
Chief Nursing Officer
JOHN PEARMAN
Chief of Staff,
Medical Center
JOSÉ QUINTANS, MD, PhD
Associate Dean and Master,
Biological Science Collegiate
Division
MICHELE SCHIELE
Associate Dean and
Vice President for Development
RICHARD SCHILSKY, MD
Associate Dean of
Clinical Research
NANCY SCHWARTZ, PhD
Dean of Graduate Affairs
NEIL SHUBIN, PhD
Associate Dean for Organismal
and Evolutionary Biology and
Provost of the Field Museum
JULIAN SOLWAY, MD
Associate Dean for
Translational Medicine
MARK A. URQUHART
Vice President for Facilities,
Design and Construction
CAROLYN WILSON
Associate Dean and
Chief Operating Officer,
University of Chicago
Practice Plan
ERIC B. YABLONKA
Vice President and Chief
Information Officer
Medical Staff
Organization
ANN SCHWIND
Associate Dean and
Chief Financial Officer
J. RICHARD THISTLETHWAITE,
MD, PhD
President
SANDRA SENTI
Assistant Dean and
Executive Director of
Information Services
STEPHEN G. WEBER, MD, MS
Vice President
KENNETH SHARIGIAN
Associate Dean and
Chief Operating Officer
SUSAN S. SHER
Vice President for Legal and
Governmental Affairs and
General Counsel
P. ALLAN KLOCK, JR., MD
Secretary
SANDRA CULBERTSON, MD
Councilor
FRED OVSIEW, MD
Councilor
ANESTHESIA AND CRITICAL CARE
Jeffrey Apfelbaum, MD
NEUROLOGY
Christopher Gomez, MD, PhD
BEN MAY INSTITUTE FOR
CANCER RESEARCH
Marsha Rosner, PhD
OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY
Arthur Haney, MD
BIOCHEMISTRY AND
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Anthony Kossiakoff, PhD
OPHTHALMOLOGY AND
VISUAL SCIENCES
William Mieler, MD
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Joy Bergelson, PhD
ORGANISMAL BIOLOGY
AND ANATOMY
Jan-Marino Ramirez, PhD
FAMILY MEDICINE
Bernard Ewigman, MD
PATHOLOGY
Vinay Kumar, MD
HEALTH STUDIES
Ronald Thisted, PhD
PEDIATRICS
Steve Goldstein, MD, PhD
HUMAN GENETICS
T. Conrad Gilliam, PhD
PSYCHIATRY
Emil Coccaro, MD
MEDICINE
Joe G.N. Garcia, MD
RADIATION AND
CELLULAR ONCOLOGY
Ralph Weichselbaum, MD
MICROBIOLOGY
Olaf Schneewind, MD, PhD
MOLECULAR GENETICS
AND CELL BIOLOGY
Laurens Mets, PhD
NEUROBIOLOGY, PHARMACOLOGY
AND PHYSIOLOGY
S. Murray Sherman, PhD
RADIOLOGY
Richard Baron, MD
SURGERY
Jeffrey Matthews, MD
Financial Highlights
Hospital services at the University of Chicago Medical
Center ended fiscal year 2006 with an excess of revenues over expenses
of $72 million, or 8 percent of $884 million in operating revenues, following net income of $100 million in 2005. The strong surpluses in both
years provide the capital capacity to invest in programs, technology and
facilities to advance the forefront of medicine. Within the overall 2006
results, $59 million came from investment income and other non-operating sources, including strong realized gains on stocks. Earnings from
operations were $13 million, consisting of $15 million at the main hospitals net of $2 million in support for regional doctors offices; this result
is down from the record $70 million generated in 2005. The shift in the
components of income demonstrates the importance of maintaining
investment reserves to help bridge the cycles in both payment rates and
expenditures that we, like most academic medical centers, experience
over time.
Overall patient activity—measured by admissions and patient days, as
well as outpatient visits to the clinics and emergency rooms—increased
by 1 to 2 percent in 2006. Hospital operating revenues (net of the provision for doubtful accounts and provider taxes paid) rose by less than
5 percent, representing an increase in payment rates well below the
underlying growth rate in medical costs. This reflects a shift in activity
toward Medicare, Medicaid and other health plans that pay less than
traditional private insurance, and in the case of government reimbursement, far less than the cost of care. Notably, Illinois’ Medicaid provider
tax program has not yet been approved by the federal government,
resulting in a $17 million shortfall in 2006.
Net expenses increased by nearly 13 percent, including approximately
$20 million of costs for the first full year of operation of the new Comer
Children’s Hospital. Spending for highly skilled staff, employee benefits,
new drugs and technology, insurance, and the support of physician practices and new programs, also contributed to the greater growth in
expenses compared to revenues. As payment shortfalls continued through
2006, we began a program of rebalancing costs and revenues, applying
national benchmarks to improve the efficacy of operations across hospital services. This effort is expected to reduce costs by $20 million in the
coming year.
Operating expenses included nearly $70 million for program development,
outpatient and specialty practice support, primary care, medical direction
of hospital services, supervision of residents, and other physician work
at the Medical Center provided by the clinical faculty of the Division of
the Biological Sciences. An additional $15 million was transferred from net
assets to fund academic renewal in clinical and basic sciences. At nearly
10 percent of revenues, these funds demonstrate a continuing commitment to the human capital represented by the faculty, who serve as the
Medical Center’s medical staff.
The hospitals provided a record $87 million of charity care in 2006, up
nearly 90 percent from the previous year. Charity care includes the unreimbursed cost of care to those with no insurance, plus the amount by
which costs exceed payments for patients covered by Medicaid. This second component increased sharply due to the absence of the Medicaid
provider tax program in 2006. The University of Chicago Medical Center is
one of the largest providers of care to the poor and uninsured in Illinois.
The balance sheet demonstrates continued commitment to building
financial and physical capital at a time of economic uncertainty.
Investments increased by $129 million to $612 million at June 30, 2006,
reflecting strong investment returns, philanthropy and continuous
improvement in management of accounts receivable and other working
capital. Net property, plant and equipment increased by $31 million to
$497 million, including development of computer systems to provide clinicians with enhanced access to information for diagnosis and treatment.
Net assets, or the amount by which total assets exceed total liabilities,
increased by $99 million, reaching $676 million by year-end. The 17 percent
growth in net assets during 2006 is largely the result of the $72 million
in net income and $42 million in major gifts, net of the $15 million transfer
for academic renewal.
The Biological Sciences Division recorded a $4 million budget surplus on
$543 million of revenue. Revenues increased 9 percent overall with 9 percent
growth in fees for physician services. Support from grants and contracts
increased by less than 2 percent, a modest growth anticipated given a
decrease in the federal National Institutes of Health budget last year.
Faculty and other academic compensation rose by 6 percent, and facility
and other support costs increased by 22 percent with the opening of the
Gordon Center for Integrative Science during the year. Strong philanthropic
support and growing revenue remain critical to funding academic programs.
At a time of increasing pressure on payments for patient care, the
University of Chicago Medical Center is meeting the challenge by securing a strong and diversified capital base while improving its operations
to generate the resources required to advance its missions of patient
care, research, education and community engagement.
Financial Report 2006
University of Chicago Hospitals
STATEMENT OF REVENUES AND EXPENSES
For the years ended June 30, 2006 and 2005 (in millions of dollars)
2006
2005
Operating revenues
$884
$869
Compensation, supplies, services and other
Provision for doubtful accounts
Depreciation and interest
Medicaid Provider Tax
Operating expenses
766
44
61
0
$871
680
51
53
15
$799
13
59
$72
70
30
$100
Operating income
Investment income and unrestricted gifts, net
Excess of revenues over expenses
PATIENT ACTIVITY
For the years ended June 30, 2006 and 2005
2006
2005
Admissions
26,933
26,449
Patient days
174,995
172,591
6.50
6.53
394,720
390,586
79,534
77,783
Length of stay
DCAM visits
ER visits
Division of the Biological Sciences
BALANCE SHEET
For June 30, 2006 and 2005 (in millions of dollars)
Current assets
Investments
Property, plant and equipment, net
Other assets
Total assets
Current liabilities
Long-term debt, less current maturities
Other liabilities
Total liabilities
Net assets
Total liabilities and net assets
STATEMENT OF REVENUES AND EXPENSES
For the years ended June 30, 2006 and 2005 (in millions of dollars)
2006
2005
$186
612
497
26
$1,321
$206
483
466
24
$1,179
189
364
92
$645
164
343
95
$602
676
$1,321
577
$1,179
Revenues
2006
2005
Tuition
Grants and contracts
Endowments and gifts
Patient care
Hospital transfers for academic renewal
Other income
Total revenues
$29
210
59
176
15
54
$543
$28
207
41
161
15
48
$500
Expenses
2006
2005
Faculty and other academic compensation
Financial aid
Grants and contracts
Facilities and other costs
Total expenses
$218
27
167
127
$539
$205
24
165
104
$498
$4
$2
Excess of revenues over expenses
A Record Year of Philanthropy
On June 30, 2006,
the
University of Chicago Medical Center and the
Biological Sciences Division celebrated the
most successful year ever, with a record $152
million in philanthropy. The year was distinguished by four eight-figure gifts made in rapid
succession, at a pace that reflects the momentum of science and medicine at Chicago.
On January 24, Frances and Gary Comer
announced a new gift of $42 million to create
the Comer Center for Children and Specialty
Care, which will adjoin the Comer Children’s
Hospital. The Comers’ most recent gift is the
largest in the Medical Center’s or the
University’s history.
Two weeks later, the Wall Street Journal broke
the news of Gwen and Jules Knapp’s $25 million gift for construction of the Gwen and Jules
Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, a 10story, state-of-the-art laboratory facility to
open early in 2008.
After a very brief pause, Ellen and Melvin
Gordon’s gift of $25 million to name the
University’s largest science building—the
Gordon Center for Integrative Science—was
announced at the Center’s formal opening on
April 26.
Within another short month, a fourth major
donation was announced: $10 million from the
Duchossois family to fund the Duchossois
Family Metastasis Research Program.
The headlines and excitement generated by
these extraordinary gifts tell only part of the
story of philanthropy for Chicago’s medical
enterprise. More than 15,000 donors have
made commitments thus far to the Spark
Discovery, Illuminate Life campaign. At the
close of FY06, with the support of each of these
donors, the campaign sped past the $600 million mark, moving headlong toward the new
goal of $700 million by June 2008.
Honor Roll List of Contributors 2006
$25,000,000 and above
Richard P. Parrillo
$250,000 to 499,999
Trust Estate of Bernard Jerome Ransil
Comer Science and Education
Foundation Fund of The Chicago
Community Foundation
The Pritzker Foundation
Abbott Laboratories
Trust Estate of Anne Ressner
Barbara and Michael Simon
Aetna Foundation
Donald W. Reynolds Foundation
Mr. James Stephen
American Health Assistance
Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Reynolds III
American Heart Association of
Metropolitan Chicago
Ms. Norma Stone
Frances and Gary† Comer
Ellen and Melvin Gordon
Gwen and Jules F. Knapp
$10,000,000 to 24,999,999
Craig and Janet Duchossois
The Duchossois Family Foundation
$5,000,000 to 9,999,999
Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Fund for
Cancer Research
$1,000,000 to 4,999,999
American Cancer Society Illinois
Division, Inc.
American Cancer Society, Inc.
American Heart Association
Gwendolen Stoughton
Trust Estate of Albina Y. Surbis
The UCCRF Women's Board
$500,000 to 999,999
American Diabetes Association
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Association
Mr. and Mrs. Joel Barnett
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Cancer Research Institute
Crohns and Colitis Foundation
The Schweppe Foundation
Takeda Pharmaceuticals
$100,000 to 249,999
Dr. and Mrs. Robert K. Adamson
Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Diermeier
Alzheimer's Disease and Related
Disorders Association, Inc.
Arthur Foundation
Christopher S. Eklund
American College of Surgeons
Karam Batra
G&P Foundation for Cancer Research
The Breast Cancer Research
Foundation
Geraldi Norton Foundation
American Gastroenterological
Association
Mr. and Mrs. George A. Gould
American Lung Association
The Chicago Home for Incurables
Grant Healthcare Foundation
Thomas J. Duckworth and
Connie Duckworth
The Greenwall Foundation
American Society for Therapeutic
Radiology and Oncology
Enivar Charitable Fund
Irving Harris Foundation
American Society of Clinical Oncology
Anagen Therapeutics, Inc.
Rabbi Morris Esformes
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer
Foundation
Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk
Medical Trust
Sally and Jonathan Kovler
Dr. Graeme I. Bell
Lincy Foundation
Branfman Family Foundation
Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation
Trust Estate of Henry F. Brooks
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Kriegstein
March of Dimes Birth Defects
Foundation
Cancer & Leukemia Group B
Foundation
Gastro-Intestinal Research
Foundation
Lupus Research Institute
Genevieve M. Marion
Mary Ann and Barry MacLean
James S. McDonnell Foundation
Chicago Lying-in Hospital
Board of Directors
Trust Estate of Bernard I. Hasterlik
Trust Estate of Lena R. Markheim
Medtronic, Inc.
Trust Estate of Therese M. Hasterlik
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Melman
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
G. Harold and Leila Mathers
Charitable Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation
Merck Company Foundation
Claire and Dennis Nardoni
Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation
Sandler Program for Asthma
Research
Mr. David S. Kalt and
Dr. Susan S. Kalt
The Sandler Family Supporting
Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard
Foundation
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Irving† and Carol Slott
Pfizer, Inc.
Brain Research Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Bucksbaum
Cancer Research Foundation
Fritz L. and Mary Lee Duda
Family Foundation
Jim and Karen Frank
Mrs. Leonard S. Florsheim, Jr.
GlaxoSmithKline
Muscular Dystrophy Association, Inc.
NARSAD Research Institute, Inc.
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
The Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Inc.
Mr. James Bay and Ms. Laurie Bay
Concern Foundation
Cornelius Crane Trust
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Da Miano
Exelon Corporation
Robert and Joan Feitler
Julius N. Frankel Foundation
Genentech, Inc.
Robert and Margot Haselkorn
The William Randolph Hearst
Foundation
†
Deceased
BrainsGate, Ltd.
LaSalle National Corporation
Elliot and Frances Lehman
Mr. and Mrs. David Katz
Sanofi-Synthelabo, Inc.
Lorin M. Brown, MD, and
Helen Jo Brown, PhD
Constance T. and Dennis J. Keller
Mr. and Mrs. Gordon I. Segal
California Healthcare Foundation
Daniel P. Mass, MD, and
Lenore E. Mass
Sidney Kimmel Foundation
Mr. Steven L. Sharp
Dean and Mrs. Joseph J. Ceithaml
Medical Student Loan Trust
Richard and Victoria Mitchell Kohn
Smart Family Foundation
Centocor Incorporated
Konica Minolta Medical
Imaging USA, Inc.
The Thrall Family
The Children's Health Fund
Mesothelioma Applied Research
Foundation
Infectious Disease Society of America
Dr. and Mrs. Paul H. Jordan, Jr.
Sacks Family Foundation – Cari and
Michael J. Sacks
Estate of M. Peter Miller, Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. J. Jeffrey Thrall
Community Foundation for
Southeastern Michigan
Mr. J. Randall Thrall
Cordis Corporation
Jan and Steve Nakovich
Mr. and Mrs. John D. Mabie
Ms. Brooke Thrall and
Mr. Richard Weinberger
Robert J. Costarella, MD
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
National Alliance for Autism
Research, Inc.
Mr. Bernard Marcus
Mr. and Mrs. A. Jay Thrall
Freda and Sidney Davidson
National Health Research Institute
Ben May Charitable Trust
Mr. and Mrs. J. Christopher Thrall
Victor H. Dropkin Foundation
Ms. Baylie Owen
Bernice† and Earl Meltzer
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mazza
Estate of Edna L. Dunning
Mr. and Mrs. Forrest B. Owen
Leukemia Research Foundation, Inc.
Lupus Clinical Trials Consortium, Inc.
John J. Lytel Family Trust
†
The UCCRF Auxiliary Board
Trust Estate of Annie W. Durand
Partners HealthCare System, Inc.
Jack and Goldie Wolfe Miller
The V Foundation for Cancer Research
Mr. and Mrs. Vincent W. Foglia
Drs. Arti and Samir Patel
The Bernard A. and Marjorie I.
Mitchell Family Foundation, Marjorie
I. Mitchell and Lee H. Mitchell
Helen Hay Whitney Foundation
Foundation for Anesthesia Education
and Research
Polk Bros. Foundation, Inc.
FujiFilm/Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.
R2 Technology, Inc.
National Geographic Society
$50,000 to 99,999
The Getty Foundation
Trust Estate of Allen Rabin
National Kidney Foundation
of Illinois
Abbott Laboratories Fund
Mr. Walter E. Glass
The Greater Cedar Rapids Foundation
Academy Health
Glaxo Institute for Digestive Health
Mr. and Mrs. William Adams IV
Stanford and Ann Dudley Goldblatt
Christopher Reeve Paralysis
Foundation
Fred & Jean Allegretti Foundation
Guidant Foundation, Inc.
Riding For a Cure
Alzheimer's Disease Research
Mr. Robert P. Gwinn
Sage Products, Inc.
American College of Rheumatology
The Gynecologic Cancer Foundation
American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Hammersmith
Mr. John M. Scandalios and
Jackie D. Scandalios
Personality Disorder Research Corp.
Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc.
Philips Medical Systems, Inc.
The Pritzker Pucker Family
Foundation
Mr. Michael Pucker and
Ms. Gigi Pritzker Pucker
The Pritzker Traubert Family
Foundation
Penny Pritzker and
Bryan Traubert
Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Wilson
The American Parkinson Disease
Association, Inc.
The John A. Hartford
Foundation, Inc.
Prostate Cancer Foundation
Mr. A. Jack Schaps
Scios, Inc.
The Hunckler Family
Select Comfort Direct Corp.
American Society of Nephrology
Johns Hopkins University
Mr. and Mrs. Earl W. Shapiro
Aon Foundation
Mr. H. Fisk Johnson
Mr. Jeff Sluman and Dr. Linda Skoog
Gilbert F. and Judith S. Asher
Mr. and Mrs. John B. Snyder
Mr. Thomas H. Quinn
Association of Black Cardiologists, Inc.
KIDNEEDS Fund of The Greater Cedar
Rapids Community Foundation
Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc.
Mrs. Jacqueline Berry
Catharine† and Jerry Kollros
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth E. Stinson
Biogen, Inc.
Mrs. Elisabeth F. Lanzl
Synta Pharmaceuticals
Fred T. Richardson
Deceased
Mount Sinai Hospital Medical Center
Merck & Co., Inc.
The Charles W. Palmer Family
†
Mr. and Mrs. Jerome A. Thrall
Donald F. Steiner, MD
Teva Neuroscience, Inc.
Drs. Gregory and Virginia Thomas
Mr. and Mrs. James Thomas
U3 Pharma AG
United Negro College Fund
Eugene and Mary Van Scott
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Werner
The Whitaker Foundation
Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer
Foundation
Children's Research Foundation, Inc.
Dr. Norman Frankel
Citigroup Business Services
Drs. Sheila F. and Martin Friedlander
Arnold and Mabel Beckman
Foundation
Mr. H. J. Clonick
Lloyd A. Fry Foundation
CNA Foundation
Dr. and Mrs. Damien A. Gabis
Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis
The Galter Foundation
Cogan McNabola & Dolan, LLC
Continental Advisors, LLC
Mr. Richard J. Geddes and
Ms. Rebecca Davidson
Mr. E. David Coolidge
Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Gelbort
Mr. and Mrs. James S. Crown
The Charlotte Geyer Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Begel
Kenneth M. Begelman, MD
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Benjamin
Mrs. Edwin A. Bergman
Bruce and Beth White
Marie Krane Bergman and
Robert H. Bergman
Mrs. Rebecca E. Crown
Dr. and Mrs. Bruce D. Given
$10,000 to 49,999
Howard and Carol Bernick
Family Foundation
Dr. and Mrs. Anthony F. Cutilletta
Douglass and Kim Given
AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety
Dr. and Mrs. Joel E. Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Rod Dammeyer
Glen Eagle Partners, Ltd.
ABN AMRO North America, Inc.
Mr. David B. Berzon
Max Goldenberg Foundation
Acura of Brookfield
Big Monster Toys, LLC
Jordan L. Daniels, MD, and
Barbara L. Daniels
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Africano
Mr. and Mrs. Edward McCormick
Blair, Jr.
Brian Delanty Invitational
Mr. James A. Gordon
Allstate Foundation
Deloitte & Touche
Graff Diamonds (U.S.A.), Inc.
Alsius Corporation
William Blair & Company
The Des Cancer Network
American Association of
Neurosurgeons
Mrs. Tybe Blink
Mr. and Mrs. Terry D. Diamond
Grant Community High School
District 124
Ellen Block
The Diamond Family Foundation
American Association of
Physicists in Medicine
Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc.
Dr. R. M. Doroghazi and
C. S. Doroghazi
American Chemical Society
Petroleum Research Fund
Dr. and Mrs. James E. Bowman, Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. Martin Boyer
Dick and Judi Duchossois
Alice G. Hanson Family Foundation
The Brainchild Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Allan Edelson
Hattie A. Harris Fund
Deborah Bricker
Edwards Lifesciences, LLC
Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Harrold III
American Psychiatric Association
Donald D. Brown
Estate of Glenn Ehrler
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Hershenhorn
American Skin Association, Inc.
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum
Hollister, Inc.
American Society of
Echocardiography
Caitlin's Cause, Inc.
The George M. Eisenberg
Foundation for Charities
Amgen, Inc.
John W. Anderson Foundation
Harry F. and Elaine Chaddick
Foundation
Paul and Mary Anderson
American Orthopaedic Society for
Sports Medicine
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gonzalez
Jules R. and Eleanor B. Green
Charitable Trust
Dr. Mark J. Greenwald
Eli Lilly and Company
Illinois-Eastern Iowa District of
Kiwanis Intl.
The Endocrine Society
Illinois Neurofibromatosis, Inc.
Sidney and Sondra Berman Epstein
Institute of Medicine of Chicago
Mr. Fred Chamanara
Mr. Richard Erlich
Integrated Therapeutics Group, Inc.
ARCS Foundation, Inc.,
Chicago Chapter
Ms. Kathleen E. Chapski
Mr. and Mrs. Philip Esformes
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Chereskin
Andrew G. Farr, PhD
International Organization of
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Bachmann Family Foundation
The Chester Foundation
Mrs. Janet E. Farr
Jack and Judith K. Baker Fund
Ronald L. Chez
Mr. and Mrs. Eric Fess
Mr. and Mrs. Jack Baker
Chicago White Sox Charities, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. James Foley
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd.
Children's Brain Disease Foundation
Foundation for Air Medical Research
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas S. Basler
Children's Cancer Research Fund
The Francis Families Foundation
California Pizza Kitchen Foundation
Hollye and Jeff Jacobs
Valerie B. Jarrett
Mr. John W. Jordan
JP Morgan Chase
Junior Cancer League
Mr. and Mrs. Garnett Keith
Mr. John J. McDonough
Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals
Raymond W. Steblay, MD
Sandra M. Kilts and James M. Kilts
Peter F. McManus Charitable Trust
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Douglas M. Kinney
Meditech Sinica Corporation
Pulmonary Hypertension
Research Fund
Mr. Ronald Kittle
Medivance, Inc.
The Research Foundation of AANS
Mr. and Mrs. John Svoboda
Mr. and Mrs. Keith M. Kizziah
Mr. and Mrs. Bernard D. Meltzer
ResMed Foundation
Michael and Diane Tang
Klein Tools, Inc.
Ms. Rita Meltzer
Richemont North America, Inc.
Texas Children's Hospital
Courtney A. Kleman Trust
Miami Children's Hospital
The Lehman Brothers Foundation
Kathleen L. Kornafel, MD, PhD
Harvey L. Miller Family Foundation
Rafael Rivera III Asthma
Research Fund
S. Walter Kran, MD
Mr. and Mrs. John A. Miller
Janys A. Harvey and
Howard G. Krane
Mr. and Mrs. Joshua W. Miller
Ms. Lisa Miner
Si-hoi Lam, MD
Robert Packard Center for
ALS Research
Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Morel
Mr. and Mrs. Theodore H. Roberts
Jim and Eve Tyree
Mr. and Mrs. William M. Landes
Motorola, Inc.
Mr. William Rosing
UBS AG
Mrs. Barbara Lazerwitz
Chris and Carmi Murphy
Ken and Lucy Lehman
RST Memorial Cancer Foundation
Adolph R. Nachman, MD
Leopardo Construction, Inc.
Dr. and Mrs. Louis Rubin
United States-Israel Binational
Science Foundation
Robert E. Naser Real Estate
Mr. Irving A. Lewis
George Rusu and Cindy Rusu
Judy and Wayne Lewis
National Childhood Cancer
Foundation
Mr. Anthony Santacroce
The Visiting Nurse Association of
Chicago & VNA Foundation
Bowman C. Lingle Trust
National Kidney Foundation, Inc.
Sara Lee Foundation
Mrs. Roy I. Warshawsky
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Linn
National Organization For
Rare Disorders
Schering-Plough Research Institute
Waterton Associates, LLC
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Schloerb
Trust Estate of William J. Watson
National Sleep Foundation
Mr. Charlie Schoenherr
Weible & Cahill
Kay Alden and Vernon Nelson
Mr. and Mrs. David R. Schwartz
The Doctors Pichon and Vivien Loh
Mr. Richard Nichilo
Mr. and Mrs. James M. Schwartz
Mr. James M. Weichselbaum and
Ms. Susan L. Weichselbaum
Dr. David C. MacGregor
Mr. and Mrs. Chris Seth
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Weiss
Macula Foundation, Inc.
Novartis Pharmaceuticals
Corporation
Dr. and Mrs. Bernard Silber
Mary A. Wheeler
Vicki M. and James L. Madara
Mr. Brien O'Brien
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Mr. Barry Malkin and Ms. Jodi Block
Ortho Biotech, Inc.
Richard Smykal, Inc.
Dr. David H. Whitney and
Dr. Juliana Chyu
Mr. Judd D. Malkin
Parkinson's Disease Foundation
Trust Estate of H. Gladys Spear
The Windy City Classic Foundation
Mr. Stephen J. Malkin
Levenfeld Pearlstein
Spine Research and Education, Inc.
Mrs. Harry Woldenberg
Mrs. Jill Malott
Perceptive Informatics, Inc.
Dr. Elizabeth Springer
Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Woldenberg
The Malott Family
PFM Medical, Inc.
Mr. James Spurlock
Paula Wolff and Wayne Whalen
Mattel Children's Foundation
Lisa and Mark Pinsky
State Bank of Countryside
Ms. Amy Mazzolin
Mr. and Mrs. Chris Pohle
Mr. Gildo Mazzolin
Dr. Ronald B. Port
Ms. Robin M. Steans and
Mr. Leonard A. Gail
Women's Council of the Brain
Research Foundation
Live! The Elvi Rannala Foundation
for Cancer Research
Trust Estate of Clara Locher
Riverain Medical Group
Riviera Country Club
Mr. Randall Svendsen
E. Gregory Thomas, MD
Ms. Laura Thrall
Mrs. Julia Tolkan
Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc.
Terry and Linda Van Der Aa
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Zell
Medical & Biological Sciences Annual Funds
LEON O. JACOBSON SOCIETY
THE HELEN CULVER SOCIETY
The Leon O. Jacobson Society honors alumni, faculty and friends who
support the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of
Medicine with annual gifts of $10,000 or more. Dr. Jacobson was an outstanding leader of the University’s Biological Sciences Division.
Dr. Jacobson administered the first successful cancer chemotherapy and
helped pioneer the study of bone marrow transplant. He served as Dean
of the Division for two terms and believed in giving medical students the
opportunity to “go as far as they could go.”
The Helen Culver Society honors alumni, faculty, and friends who support
the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of
Medicine with annual gifts of $1,500–$4,999. The Helen Culver Society
recognizes Miss Culver, whose gifts helped build the University of
Chicago’s first four laboratories in the quadrangle and provided for the
instruction of research scientists and medical students.
Kenneth M. Begelman, MD
Donald D. Brown
Abbott Laboratories Fund
Herman and Rose Weiner Kattlove
David Gordon Anderson
Elliott D. Kieff, PhD
Eugene and Mary Van Scott
Dr. and Mrs. Eugene H. Blackstone
Drs. Dennis and Anita Lee
Dr. David H. Whitney and
Dr. Juliana Chyu
Charles R. Boardman, MD
Peter J. Lindberg, MD
Leslie P. Dean, MD
Thomas J. McKearn, MD, PhD
Dr. Erl Dordal and
Ms. Dorothy K. Powers
Jacqueline M. Moline, MD
Charles Eil, MD, PhD
CHARLES B. HUGGINS SOCIETY
Dr. and Mrs. Richard L. Schilsky
Dr. Mary M. Finegan
Bennett and Anna Shatkin
The Charles B. Huggins Society honors alumni, faculty and friends who
support the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of
Medicine with annual gifts of $5,000–$9,999. The Charles B. Huggins
Society recognizes Dr. Huggins, one of the University’s original faculty
members when the medical school was founded in 1927. During his sixty
years at the University, he founded a renowned cancer research laboratory, trained and inspired numerous prominent medical scientists, and
was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering a new principle for the treatment of advanced cancer.
Dr. and Mrs. John Michael Gaca
Jesse Hall and Barbara Engel
Drs. Michael L. and
Vivien B. Shelanski
Ernest Hamel, MD, PhD
Dr. Keyoumars Soltani
Mr. and Mrs. John T. Harris
Charles E. Test, MD
David B. Harrison, MD
The Three Ninety Fund
Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Hellman
Dr. and Mrs. Robert B. Uretz
Dr. and Mrs. Arthur L. Herbst
Todd E. Vermeer, MD, and Mrs.
Samantha A. Hodgkins
Dr. and Mrs. Bernard Silber
Dr. Wing C. Chan and
Ms. Angelina Hoo-Yee Li
Mr. Bert A. Getz
Dr. and Mrs. Bruce D. Given
Kenneth and Janet Gray Hayes
Valerie B. Jarrett
Howard and Stephanie Kirz
Kathleen L. Kornafel, MD, PhD
Dr. Roland and Mrs. Vivian Ng
Dr. and Mrs. Louis Rubin
Dr. and Mrs. Paul S. Russell
Dr. and Mrs. Martin E. Sanders
Coleman R. Seskind, MD
Ruth M. Heyn, MD
Philip C. Hoffmann, PhD†
Dr. William F. Hopkins and
Mrs. Florence Hopkins
Drs. Holly Humphrey and
Duane Follman
Johnson & Johnson Family
of Companies
Carol A. Olson, MD, PhD
Debra E. Weese-Mayer, MD, and
Robert Nathan Mayer, PhD
The Weese Foundation by
William C. Weese
Mary and Stephen Weinstein
John Culver Wooley and
Su-Yun Chung
Christopher J. Young, MD
Trust Estate of Albina Y. Surbis
Dr. and Mrs. Robert G. Tardiff
Cynthia M. Thaik, MD
†
Deceased
The Forefront Fund Honor Roll
Forefront Fund members generously provide unrestricted support, which provides the financial
flexibility necessary to push the boundaries of discovery. Contributors to the Forefront Fund appreciate
the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division and Medical Center’s unique bench-to-bedside
approach that places them at the Forefront of Science and Medicine.
$25,000 and above
Mr. and Mrs. Edward McCormick Blair, Jr.
AMBASSADOR $2,500–4,999
The Duchossois Family Foundation
Craig and Janet Duchossois
Ellen Block
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Arquilla
Dr. Bernard Ewigman
Jim and Karen Frank
Mrs. Mary Brennan
Anne L. Arvia
Jeffrey and Karen Finesilver
The Hunckler Family
Kevin and Kristi Brown
Ivy Bennett
Mayumi Fukui
Mr. Brien O'Brien
Mr. Keith W. Colburn
Mr. and Mrs. Maurice J. Beznos
Jodi and Gary Cullen
Dr. Otis W. Brawley
Dr. Steve A.N. Goldstein and
Ms. Emily Novick
BENEFACTOR $10,000–24,999
Ms. Shawn M. Donnelley
Mr. and Mrs. Frank M. Clark
Marie Krane Bergman and
Robert H. Bergman
Lawrence J. Furnstahl
Elaine Frank
Howard and Carol Bernick
Family Foundation
Mr. Miles R. Gilburne and Ms. Nina Zolt
Dr. Joe G.N. Garcia
Mr. and Mrs. Rodney L. Goldstein
Mr. and Mrs. Mike Losacco
Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Gray
John P. and Carol E. Mordach
Mr. John H. Hart and Ms. Carol Prins
Mr. and Mrs. James T. Rhind
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Horwich
David P. and Linda M. Riley
Valerie B. Jarrett
Betsy and Andrew Rosenfield
Ms. Marilyn Kutzen
Mr. Richard Saller
Ken and Lucy Lehman
Ms. Cyndi Simon
Mr. and Mrs. John B. Snyder
Ralph G. Moore and Associates
Dr. Daniel C. Tosteson
Mr. and Mrs. Timothy K. Ozark
Mr. Roman L. Weil
Polk Bros. Foundation, Inc.
Eric Yablonka
Jamie M. O'Malley
Mr. Randall J. Rademaker
Maryelen Zagotta –
Words&Pictures, Inc.
The Honorable Paul G. Rogers
Deborah Bricker
Mr. and Mrs. James S. Crown
Sidney and Sondra Berman Epstein
Robert and Joan Feitler
Mr. and Mrs. Eric Fess
Stanford and Ann Dudley Goldblatt
Ellen and Melvin Gordon
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Hershenhorn
Mr. and Mrs. John D. Mabie
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Reynolds III
Sara Lee Foundation
Smart Family Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. John Svoboda
Michael and Diane Tang
Jim and Eve Tyree
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Weiss
Paula Wolff and Wayne Whalen
Madeline and Michael Rosenberg
Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Schloerb
Hope and Jeffrey Sheffield
Mr. Quint Studer
Christina M. Tchen
Terry and Linda Van Der Aa
Mr. and Mrs. Scott Wald
FELLOW $5,000–9,999
Ellen S. Alberding and Kelly R. Welsh
Paul and Mary Anderson
Bruce and Beth White
Mrs. Edwin A. Bergman
Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Wilson
Mr. Timothy S. Bishop
Mr. and Mrs. Allen E. Wolf
D. Allan Gray
Mr. and Mrs. R. Dickey Hamilton
Victoria L. Humphrey
Mr. Robert S. Ingersoll
Ellen J. Irwin
Gwen and Kenneth Kates
Michael Koetting and Barbara Shaw
Mr. Bradley Kolar
Sally and Jonathan Kovler
Mr. and Mrs. Peter B. Kovler
Darlene Lewis
Mary Ann and Barry MacLean
Senator and Mrs. Barack Obama
Mr. and Mrs. John F. Richards
Michele Schiele and Chris Iannuccilli
SPONSOR $1,000–2,499
M. Roy Schwarz, MD
Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey L. Apfelbaum
Mr. Richard J. Schweickert
Mr. John Ashenden
Mr. Manuel Vivas and Ms. Ann Schwind
Dr. Richard L. Baron
Susan S. Sher
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew K. Block
Anna and Mark Siegler
Mr. and Mrs. Martin Boyer
Mr. John W. Sullivan
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum
Mr. and Mrs. Ronald A. Thisted
Mr. Edward B. Chez and
Ms. Camille DeFrank
Miss Janice Trimble
Dr. Emil F. Coccaro
Mark and Carmel Urquhart in
memory of E. Randy Urquhart
Merle and Seymour A. Cohen
Mr. and Mrs. Ed Weil
Ms. Michelle L. Collins
In Memory of
Gary Comer (1927–2006)
A masterful businessman. A leading philanthropist. A genius at helping children.
By creating the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, the Pediatric
Emergency Room and the Comer Center for Children and Specialty Care, Gary Comer
and his wife, Frances, built a state-of-the-art facility for healing children with serious illnesses. The doctors and nurses of Comer Children's Hospital have cared for
thousands of children in Mr. Comer's childhood neighborhood on Chicago's South
Side, and they will care for thousands more in the years to come. And the treatments those physicians are bringing from the bench to the bedsides of these young
patients are helping children in other hospitals around the world.
www.uchospitals.edu
5841 South Maryland Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60637

1:15 PM - The University of Chicago Medicine

Transcription

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