At Rush University Medical Center, providing the best possible care for patients isn't just our job: It's our mission. And it's at the heart of everything we do.

Since our founding in 1837, we have dedicated ourselves to serving — and to transforming the lives of — the people in our West Side neighborhood, in Chicago and beyond.

A key component of Rush's “patients first” mission is meeting the health care needs of all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. We treat every patient as we would treat members of our own families — with compassion, understanding and respect for their unique needs.

So it's not surprising that the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), an alliance of approximately 100 academic medical centers, has awarded Rush the highest possible score — 100 percent — for “equity of care” three consecutive times during the annual quality and safety benchmarking studies it conducts of its member institutions. This ranking measures whether patients receive the same quality of treatment and have the same outcomes regardless of their gender, race or socioeconomic status. This is just one of the reasons UHC has also rated Rush among the top tier of its member institutions' “top-performing hospitals” three years running.

Consistent with our commitment to charitable purposes and to strengthening the community, Rush University Medical Center and Rush Oak Park Hospital provided more than $134.5 million in community benefits in fiscal year 2007 to the West Side and to the Chicago area. Part of that amount was $79.2 million in unreimbursed, but much needed, care that Rush provided to its patients.

For more information, download PDF of the full community benefits report. Just use the “Rush Community Benefits Report” link under Related Topics to the right (below the Topic Index).

How can Rush afford to do this? As a nonprofit organization, any revenue that is left after paying expenses is reinvested in our institution for such things as new equipment and building repairs. A significant part of this goes into services that benefit patients: free care for patients who cannot pay and care for patients whose government insurance does not pay all of our costs; and critical medical services that operate at a financial loss but are necessary for the community's overall health.

As an academic medical center, Rush also subsidizes health and medical research that focuses on improving patient care, now and for future generations, by covering expenses not funded by private or government grants. We also use revenue to subsidize the education of the next generation of heath care providers whose tuition and grants do not cover the actual costs of educating and training these students, new doctors and other health care professionals. And we fund a variety of vital programs, such as mammography, that help meet the specific health needs of our community and beyond.

Perhaps the most important contributions come from the many students, faculty and staff at Rush who generously donate their time and skills both within and outside the Medical Center. Their efforts, only some of which are detailed in this report, include numerous health outreach projects in which Rush collaborates with neighborhood clinics, churches, schools and other organizations to provide health screenings and vital health information for underserved youths and adults of all ages.

Visit our Department of Community Affairs for information on the the assistance the department provides to the community to improve health and education, especially for children and young adults.