Dear Residency Applicant,
Welcome to the University of Chicago (NorthShore) Family Medicine Residency website. It is an exciting time to pursue Family Medicine in the United States. Primary Care has become an integral part of the discussion about healthcare reform in the United States. It is helping to highlight Family Medicine as the specialty which embraces the essence of what people want in their physician – someone to provide patient/family-centered, compassionate, and wholistic care over their entire lifetime.
NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) began its teaching affiliation with the prestigious University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in July 2009. This exciting new affiliation has brought important, fresh academic opportunities and institutional support to our training program. These include opportunities for several unique electives in care for the urban underserved, women's health, and academic family medicine research, in addition to our existing opportunities in Integrative and Complementary Medicine and sports medicine. The Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago is a national leader in primary care research. The Family Practice Inquiries Network, (FPIN) a national web-based research network with a publication called Evidence Based Practice was pioneered by our chairman, Dr. Bernard Ewigman. This exciting opportunity to be involved in primary care research is integrated into our innovative evidence-based medicine curriculum. I invite you to read more about our department from the Chair of Family Medicine, Bernard Ewigman, MD, MSPH.
Our Primary training site, Glenbrook Hospital, serves a diverse population, with patients in the Family Care Center coming from many ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic circumstances. Through our affiliation with the Lake County Health Department, we provide prenatal care to a largely Spanish-speaking, low-income population, enhancing the training of residents and our commitment to providing care to underserved populations. With the acquisition of a fourth hospital to the NorthShore system in January 2009 and a $100 million expansion of Glenbrook Hospital currently underway, we continue to focus on enhancing our care to the community we serve.
Our health system is truly one of the best in the country. We remain financially sound and continue to grow despite difficult economic times. Our fully integrated electronic medical record, (EPIC), is easily accessible from home or office. EPIC provides tools to maximize the quality of patient care and increase patient safety through instant communication among primary care physicians, consultants and immediate access to x-ray, CT and MRI images, among other features We were one of the first health systems in the United States to have earned the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Stage 7 Award for an advanced EMR. NorthShore has been named one of the nation's Top 100 Hospitals and the only Illinois Hospital to be recognized as a Top 15 Major Teaching Hospital by Thomson Reuters, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of healthcare. Our Family Medicine Residency Program enjoys the sound support of our NorthShore administration, and I invite you to read more about this from the President of Glenbrook Hospital, Doug Silverstein.
Our residency faculty is diverse and experienced. We have faculty members who are fellowship-trained in sports medicine, obstetrics, faculty development and geriatrics. Our residents are involved in state leadership positions in family medicine and our graduates have entered various family medicine fellowships, worked in urban underserved health clinics, urgent care, home visit-based practices, in addition to traditional private and group practices.
While each residency has different strengths and characteristics, and students weigh many factors such as geography and academic reputation, it is often the sense of camaraderie among the residents and faculty that make the difference between a great experience and an exceptional one. I invite you to take a closer look at our residency program and see if it might be the right fit for you.
Sincerely,
Deborah E. Miller, MD
Program Director,
University of Chicago (NorthShore) Family Medicine Residency Program