Shriners Children’s Chicago Is Where Hope and Healing Meet in a Destination Hospital for Families

So our service lines here at Shriners Children's Chicago are orthopedics, spinal cord injury, spine care, rehabilitation, and cleft lip and palate. But I want it to be known that we also do a lot of gen orthopedics, fracture care, bumps and bruises, those types of things as well. And that's what really makes us unique. Other people are doing that in the industry, but we've been doing it for a long time and I think we do it the best.

I see ourselves as the destination for complex care. And it's just because I think patients and families think of us when it comes to rare diseases and I think it makes us work harder at it. So it gives us, I feel, greater skill to do the complex as well as the routine.

We see kids who have cerebral palsy, scoliosis, brittle bone disease. We have cleft lip and palate kids who have these incredibly complex medical needs, but because we do it every day, it's what we live and we breathe. We know exactly what to do. We know exactly how to treat your kid. And you're getting excellent high level care all the time by everyone who's here because we've all been doing this forever.

I always describe Shriners as sort of like a one-stop shop. They can come into clinic, they can see their physician. If they need braces, if they need therapy, if they need a splint, if they need nutrition services, if they need psych, everything here is under one roof.

Because Shriners Children's is a more specialized, smaller hospital, I think it just makes it easier for families to find their way around. I think it makes it easier for us to know all the people that are helping to care for patients because I know the therapists and I know the nurses and I know the people who are making the braces, which you might not get at a bigger hospital.

Everyone works as a team and focuses on the patient. And so you really can feel the difference in that motivation and the vibe when you walk in the door that that is everyone's main focus is to make that kids experience the best it can be to try and take the scary parts out of medical care.

We are feeling the love, the compassion from the person who's checking us in all the way to our surgeons. I mean, our surgeon has become like family to us. He's done all surgeries on both of our kids. The care here is just outstanding and just so specific to the needs of our kids. And that was exactly what we wanted, what we needed.

So Shriners Children's is unique in that we're the philanthropy of the Shriners Fraternity. What that allows us to do is be able to provide care regardless of a patient's or family's ability to pay. Others can do similar things to that, but what we can really do is from the very beginning, there's no real concern. If you have insurance or if you don't have insurance, it's not even on the minds of the physician who's providing the care.

If someone was considering bringing their children to Shriners, I would definitely recommend it 100%, at least to give it a try. I know I was blown away by the level of care. It is literally about the patient and the child and their care. I mean, you no longer had to fight with whether it be insurance or the doctor recommendations or does she need this or what ... You just almost follow their lead because they are 100% on your team and wanting to take care and wanting the best quality of life.

We are really privileged to practice in this type of environment where we can touch the lives of any child. As long as we have the skillset and we have the ability to take care of that child in the scope of care that we're able to do, we can help them with almost anything in those areas.

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