A member of the Midwest Leadership Board for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital says no child will lose their care as the affiliation with OSF HealthCare comes to an end.
Peoria-based OSF and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria [UICOMP] announced this week the long-standing collaboration with the St. Jude Midwest Affiliate Clinic will end as of June 30, although existing patients will receive the St. Jude affiliate model of care over the next three years.
“St. Jude hasn’t changed. St. Jude is still going to provide no cost, treatment, travel, housing, food for these patients who are St. Jude patients,” said James Ingold, who serves on the St. Jude Midwest Leadership Board. “The fact is, any existing St. Jude patient is still going to be taken care of financially for at least the next three years.
“We’re positioned, I think, to have better answers in the next few days. But I was on a St. Jude board meeting this morning, and we had four people from Memphis on the meeting and they were very, very clear that the doors are still open.”
Ingold also said fundraising efforts for St. Jude across Central Illinois will remain unchanged.
“Every event that you’ve seen, from lemonade stands to telethons to radio-thons to galas, the “run, ride and drive,” the Memphis-to-Peoria run, it’s still going,” he said.
“We’ve always been raising money for the research and treatment that’s available from the protocols that are started in Memphis, so our fundraising has to be exactly the same because we’re still funding the same overall budget. Some of that money is not going into Peoria now, but it’s going it’s going elsewhere that is still going to help the people in Central Illinois.”
Ingold said while there’s no one set answer for every patient, the biggest change may be having to relocate for continued treatment.
“I think the best word is it just may be an inconvenience for some of the families because they were getting treatment in Peoria, they may now need to go to Memphis to get that, to get that same treatment,” he said. “We are very, very, very clear that no patient is going to be turned away because of this issue.”
Ingold said the ending of the affiliation has been a complicated situation, with St. Jude first hearing about OSF/UICOMP’s possible intentions last fall. He said families with questions can get more information by email at affiliate-peoria@stjude.org.
“Obviously this is scary because you don’t know who’s going to be taking care of what, other than we can definitely guarantee that anyone who has been a St. Jude patient through June 30 of this year will still have the option of being treated by St. Jude,” he said.
Ingold said Peoria was among eight St. Jude affiliates outside of Memphis, with the next closest being in Springfield, Missouri. He said it is “not out of the realm of possibility” that St. Jude may look elsewhere around Central Illinois for a new affiliation.
“The difficulty is there’s not a lot of health care facilities that want to have to deal with the stringent rules and regulations,” said Ingold. “There’s a lot of government regulatory issues when it comes to partnering up with other medical organizations. Just as an example, there are anti-kickback rules out there that look at: Are you getting a fee for a referral from another organization?”
