![](/sites/default/files/columnists/images/steffen_keith.jpg)
When Kevin Schoeplein was named CEO of OSF HealthCare System in 2011, one of his priorities was to set in motion the concept of One OSF. He wanted all of the people we serve to know that OSF HealthCare was much broader than just hospital services, and that no matter where you touched the OSF ministry, your care and experience should be seamless.
Our stated vision as an organization: Embracing God’s great gift of life, we are one OSF ministry transforming healthcare to improve the lives of those we serve. Under the sisters’ guidance, we all strive to walk this walk every day.
Through this vision, we are working toward that goal of becoming a healthcare leader, not just in Peoria and central Illinois, but across the country.
What does One OSF mean? Across our eight-hospital ministry, it means we are two Level I Trauma Centers; one Level II Trauma Center; 1,300+ licensed beds for patients; 2,000+ physicians and advanced practitioners; 14,000+ employees; OSF Aviation with four helicopters; two Colleges of Nursing; a home care system with more than 210,000 home health and hospice visits each year; 90+ Medical Group locations; services lines for cardiovascular, children’s and neuroscience care; Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliate; a teaching affiliate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine; and the second-largest Catholic health system in Illinois.
When you look at it on paper, managing all of what we have to offer can seem overwhelming. Along with that list comes the added responsibility to lead the way down the path of healthcare reform.
Leaders welcome the challenge of more accountability. That’s why we have established ourselves as a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As we’ve touched on before, the Pioneer ACO is a group of doctors, hospitals and healthcare providers working together with CMS to give Medicare patients better service, quality and care at a lower cost. We see this as being good for both sides, as we work to manage healthcare costs for a significant portion of our patients.
We look forward to helping people learn to manage their healthcare and become an integral part of their care team. This means we have to strongly connect patients to primary care, focus on wellness and prevention, and transform how we deliver complex care. OSF HealthCare is perfectly positioned for this because we offer care for patients at every point in their lives, and as One OSF, we can come together to serve each community and every patient.
Each of our sister hospitals has different services based on the needs of the communities in which they are located. As a Level I Trauma Center, OSF Saint Francis Medical Center is blessed to have physician specialists on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Through the One OSF model, this resource can be tapped by all, and with increasing improvements in technology, patients might even be able to stay in their home community and receive higher levels of complex care.
As OSF continues to become One, walls won’t matter anymore. Patients and caregivers will be able to connect through technology outside of our physician practices and hospitals and even the state. For instance, if you are on vacation miles from central Illinois, you will still have access to your physician and medical records through OSF myHealth.
Other initiatives designed to streamline access to healthcare are in the developmental stage, and we look forward to sharing them with you in the near-future. As One OSF, and one committed ministry, we are “alltogetherbetter.” iBi