Community Service Profiles

In fiscal year 2007, Carle provided $57.5 million in community benefit, including charity care, community health programs, donations, research, education and more. Here are just a few programs that benefited families in our community and beyond.

Community Care Discount Program
Tiffany Wells never asked to be a passenger in a car that would spin out of control, landing upside down. She never asked for a broken neck, or to be airlifted to the hospital or for the overwhelming medical debt that followed. But, that’s exactly what she faced.

On a snow-covered road, Tiffany was a passenger in a car that took a corner too fast and went over a ravine. Though the other passengers walked away with minor injuries, Tiffany was transported to Saint Anthony’s Memorial Hospital in Effingham. Two days later, when the weather cleared, she was flown by helicopter to Carle Foundation Hospital for surgery to place a plate in the back of her neck.

As Tiffany recovered, she was presented with bad news. She faced nearly $100,000 in medical bills from two different hospitals as well as a dizzying array of additional providers associated with her stay at St. Anthony’s and the bills for ground and air ambulances.

Fortunately, she was introduced to Carle Foundation Hospital’s Community Care Discount Program, which helps qualified patients with their medical bills by offering no-cost and discounted health care.

“The driver of the car I was in didn’t have insurance, so I didn’t know how I was going to pay for all these bills. I consulted some lawyers, but was told I’d have to declare bankruptcy,” explained Tiffany. “The social worker at Carle told me she thought I might qualify for the Community Care program. She referred me to Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation’s Law and Health Project to get the help I needed.”

Carle Foundation Hospital works with Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation (LOLLAF) to lighten the financial burden their patients carry. LOLLAF provides free civil legal services to low-income persons and senior citizens in 65 counties in central and southern Illinois.

The Law and Health Project is a pilot program staffed by an Americorps*VISTA volunteer and a staff attorney. Carle Foundation Hospital provides the funding for the Americorps*VISTA volunteer. The goal of the project is to provide legal assistance to medically and financially vulnerable persons who are seeking medical care at Carle Foundation Hospital and other local medical providers. The program is designed to improve patients’ health by assisting them with their legal needs. In its pilot phase, the Law and Health project’s primary focus has been to assist clients with Medicaid and Social Security disability applications.

At LOLLAF, Tiffany was provided with financial aid assistance forms and a legal advocate. After Tiffany brought in her medical bills, LOLLAF called all the providers to determine if they had financial assistance programs. To date, LOLLAF has been able to mitigate about 75 percent of Tiffany’s bills and is still working to obtain additional debt relief.

“Here she was an innocent passenger in this car and she was left with all these bills,” said Gina Sabbia, AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer and coordinator of The Law and Health Project at LOLLAF. “We were able to relieve her of a lot of debt by working with all of the different providers.”

Carle Foundation Hospital waived the entire amount owed to them, which was more than $40,000 of Tiffany’s medical bills.

“Carle administrators understand that bad debt prevents people from things like owning a home or buying a car. The hospital doesn’t get paid either way,” explained Valerie McWilliams, managing attorney of LOLLAF. “Carle has embraced the notion of community care - if a patient can’t pay the bill, they need to forgive that obligation.”

“Carle Hospital has the best community care program in the state, not just because of the generous guidelines but also because of the procedural improvements they have implemented over the last three or four years,” Valerie added.

Subsequent to the accident, Tiffany became pregnant with her first child. Though she was on bed rest for four months of her pregnancy, she feels fortunate.

“I know breaking my neck was a bad thing, but the doctor told me my pregnancy has probably helped me heal better,” said Tiffany.

She added, “Carle’s program helped me so much. I couldn’t say thanks enough to show how appreciative I am.”

A Flying Emergency Room
The driver of the rig needed help fast. He was stuck in a ditch after driving his tractor trailer off a rural Champaign County road in spring 2007. Just getting to him was a challenge – the trailer was so precariously perched that rescue workers had to use the trailer’s flat bed as a makeshift bridge. Fortunately for him, help was on the way in the form of the AirLife helicopter.

“That’s definitely one [accident] you remember,” said AirLife Pilot John Lally, who was on duty at the time.

The helicopter arrived within minutes of the accident carrying a flight nurse and a paramedic – both specially trained to handle extensive traumas. To reach the truck’s cab, the medical staff climbed across the truck’s flatbed before going down the ravine, across the pipes that spilled into the creek, and back up the other side of the creek.

Once there, they went to work, providing care even before rescue crews were able to extricate the driver from the truck. Although the extent of the driver’s injuries was unknown at the time, the flight nurse and paramedic knew he had lost a lot of blood and that they had to do whatever they could to keep his airway open. After about 45 minutes, the driver was free and John and his crew took off with their patient – on their way to Carle Foundation Hospital’s Level I Trauma Center.

“We can cut transport time in half or even a third,” said John. “That golden hour [right after a trauma] is very important.”

Not only is the helicopter’s speed (140 miles per hour) much faster than a ground ambulance, but the helicopter’s designed as a flying emergency room – stocked with medications and equipment needed to help those on the brink of death.

“When it’s between life and death,” John said, “AirLife makes a huge difference.”

AirLife is a service of Carle Foundation Hospital and St. Louis-based ARCH Air Medical Services, Inc. ARCH provides the helicopter and pilots, while Carle Foundation Hospital provides the medical staff. In 2007, the Hospital funded AirLife at a cost of $372,619. Without the Hospital’s willingness to supplement the cost, helicopter service would not be readily available in east central Illinois.

“Without the helicopter the smaller hospitals would have great difficulty in getting their critically ill patients to the higher level of care that Carle’s Level I Trauma Center offers,” said Lynn Clutts, R.N., and AirLife’s manager.

The program has grown from 11 patients flown per month at AirLife’s start in February 2003 to 66 patients flown in April 2007. The program transported 569 patients by air in 2007. Most of the flights are inter-hospital, but about 5 percent come from accident scenes.

“I’ve seen them [the flight nurse and paramedic] do pretty amazing stuff in ditches or on the side of the road,” John said.

The driver survived his accident and spent more than two weeks at Carle Foundation Hospital. Now he is home and has a good prognosis.

This story is just one of AirLife’s many successes. Crew members are often stopped in Carle’s hallways by people thanking them for saving their lives or the lives of their family members.

“We are always thrilled to hear of a good outcome and appreciate a ‘thank you’,” Lynn said.

Grant from Carle Produces Healthy Smiles and Clear Vision
Every day, uninsured people come to hospital emergency departments with dental needs. Without insurance, these people have no dentist to address their problems and no way to prevent them from happening again.

That’s why Carle Foundation Hospital committed a major portion of its $100,000 grant to the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD) for the Adult Dental Access Partnership, which provides dental services for people of all ages with Medicaid, children with limited ability to pay and adults referred through participating agencies.

“Until you deal with the tooth’s structural problem, it’s just going to keep reoccurring,” Julie Pryde, interim administrator at CUPHD, said.

“Previously, there were no dental services for adults with Medicaid in the community,” said Pryde. “People are absolutely grateful for these services.”

Carle’s donation paid for a 40-foot RV to serve as a mobile unit, portable dental equipment and equipment for two dental treatment rooms at CUPHD.

“Even more than the money was the commitment Carle Foundation Hospital was making to the issue,” Julie said. “CUPHD can only do so much. Without community partners, we can not hope to make a significant dent in this problem.”

The mobile unit is also being used to provide vision screenings. Carle’s donation paid for eye exam and eyeglass fitting equipment for both the mobile unit and CUPHD’s main location. The Champaign-Urbana Vision Cooperative, launched in April 2007, is accessible to adults and children on Medicaid.

To ensure dental services are available to low income children, Carle Foundation Hospital also donated $7,000 to Central Illinois Dental Education and Services (CIDES) to fund the Head Start Dental Clinic in Rantoul, which provides preventative and restorative care for Head Start students and their family members.

CIDES provides dental referrals for low income children and operates mobile clinics. The need for support of the Head Start program is so great that Carle Foundation Hospital provided an additional $14,000 in 2008.