Erie Family Health Center is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that delivers care to almost 70,000 patients a year. Through their 13 community and school based health centers, Erie provides portals to high-quality care and a higher quality of life, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. In order to better serve their growing patient population on the southwest side of Chicago, Erie sought to identify and establish a new inpatient hospital partner in this geography. Second Opinions worked with Erie to differentiate amongst 4 potential hospitals by characterizing and quantifying the strengths and weaknesses of each partner.

Second Opinions conducted interviews to leverage the insight of internal stakeholders and experts at Northwestern Medicine. We then used both publically available and proprietary data to evaluate the four candidate hospitals across 4 key categories: Hospital Capacity, Operations, Quality & Safety, and Financial Viability. Additionally, we created an excel model to compare the insurance plans of Erie’s patients to the plans accepted by each hospital to establish the percent of prospective patients covered. We then synthesized this data to produce hospital report cards that characterized the strengths and weaknesses of each potential inpatient partner. Erie was then able to use this data to make decisions about optimal partnerships and leverage the information in their subsequent negotiations.