University of Chicago Medical Center

University of Chicago Medical Center, 5841 S Maryland Ave, Chicago, IL 60637

The University of Chicago Medical Center medicine and biological studies is one of the nation’s leading academic medical institutions. It has been at the forefront of medical care since 1927 when it first opened to patients. The University of Chicago Medical Center also is comprised of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and Comer Children’s Hospital.

The overall rating for the University of Chicago Medical Center has three stars out of five. The hospital is located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. The hospital has an acute care facility as well as emergency services. It participates in the nursing care registry and general surgery registry. The hospital is able to track patients’ lab results, tests and referrals electronically between visits. The hospital uses outpatient and inpatient safe surgery checklists.

80% of patients at the University of Chicago Medical Center reported that their nurses “always” communicated well. 83% of the hospital’s patients reported that their doctors “always” communicated well. 56% of University of Chicago Medical Center’s patients strongly agree that they understood their care when they left the hospital. The Illinois average percentage is 53% with the national average being 52%. The survey of patients’ experiences comes from the hospital consumer assessment healthcare providers and systems. It is a national survey that asks patients about their experiences during a recent hospital stay. Hospitals and healthcare providers use these results to compare hospitals based on eleven important hospital quality topics.

In the area of timely and effective care, the University of Chicago Medical Center was surveyed about stroke care. A stroke is sometimes called a “brain attack,” which occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted. The area around the place where the stroke occurs deprives oxygen and nutrients which leads to damage to brain cells. There are two major kinds of stroke:

• An ischemic stroke, which is caused by fatty build-up or a blood clot that blocks or plugs a blood vessel or artery in the brain.
• A hemorrhagic stroke is caused by a blood vessel in the brain that breaks and bleeds into the brain.

Strokes can cause loss of ability to speak, memory issues and/or paralysis on one side of the body. One of the most important aspects as to the onset of a stroke is the medical care that is given immediately. Ischemic stroke patients who receive medicine to break up a clot in three hours after the symptoms started are much more likely to have a near full recovery whereas stroke victims who are not given the blood clot medication will have much poorer results. 89% of Illinois ischemic stroke patients received medicine to break up a blood clot within three hours after the symptoms started. That percentage is higher than the national average but there is no available data for the University of Chicago Medical Center in this category. In fact, the way it is reported, the number of patients that may have fit in this category were too few to report.

In the category of using medical imaging, the University of Chicago Medical Center shows that 30.9% of outpatients with low-back pain had an MRI without trying recommended treatment such as physical therapy first. The higher the number in this category, the more likely the facility is doing too many unnecessary MRIs for low-back pain. The Illinois average in this category is 38.6% with the national average being 39.5%.

The website for the hospital is: http://www.uchospitals.edu/index.shtml.