Top 10 Child Care Hospitals in 2022

Top 10 Child Care Hospitals in 2022
Compassionate Leader
Michael Wells
President
OSF HealthCare Children’s
Hospital of Illinois
Michael Wells began his career as a
Licensed Clinical Professional
Counselor providing mental health
counseling to children and families.
Soon after beginning practice, his path
shifted to non-profit administration.
He has been with OSF HealthCare
Children's Hospital of Illinois since
2005 and has served in various
leadership roles, including program
and business development,
system-wide quality improvement,
strategic planning, and, immediately
prior to becoming president; he served
as vice president of operations. Wells
has served as president since 2019.
elective procedures were suspended, and the public was
advised to consider alternatives to visiting emergency
departments. As a result, our surgical volumes and
emergency department visits dropped to about 50% of
typical volumes.
In addition to concerns about the potentially negative health
impact of delayed procedures and postponed emergency
department visits for those in need, the sudden and drastic
drop in patient volume created a significant gap in revenue
and challenge in managing staffing that required some
furloughs and redistribution of pediatric staff to other roles.
Second, during the lockdown and subsequent months with
significant precautions in place, we saw an overall decrease
in the types of issues that most commonly result in children
utilizing the healthcare system; primarily infectious illness,
injuries resulting from recreational activities, sports, and
motor vehicle accidents as well as routine visits to
physicians for back-to-school physicals and routine follow
up for chronic conditions.
Pediatric volumes were slower to recover than in adult
healthcare, only seeing a return to pre-pandemic volumes in
the past few months. In addition, along with most other
children's hospitals across the nation, we continue to see an
increase in behavioral health concerns. We can assume that
the stress of the pandemic contributed to an increase in
depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.
The result has been a higher number of children in the
hospital for medical reasons with co-occurring mental
health issues. The need has far outpaced the availability of
medical, psychiatric hospitals. As a result, patients are in
our children's hospital, sometimes for long periods after
their medical issues are resolved, waiting for an inpatient
bed at a psychiatric hospital.
Finally, and on a more positive note, during the pandemic,
we deployed new digital tactics to ensure patients could
receive care safely, such as telephone and televideo medical
visits. At one point, nearly half of all visits were done via
31|www.insightscare.com April 2022