South Bend’s Medical Mile: Hub of world-class care

Just what is “The Medical Mile”?

The Medical Mile is an alliance between the five largest South Bend-based medical providers and the City of South Bend. It seeks to enrich and promote the image of health care in the community.

The new alliance supports efforts to recruit new clinicians; build awareness of available medical technologies, procedures and advancements; and strengthen the image of the City of South Bend as a progressive, regional leader in health care.

“The Medical Mile is a great partnership because we have clinical and hospital practices, and medical education all working together as one unit,” says Rudolph Navari, M.D., Ph.D., assistant dean and director of the IU School of Medicine-South Bend, and director of the new Harper Cancer Institute. “We have roughly 100 medical students in the community. Their medical school time in South Bend develops relationships with doctors and hospitals, making them more likely to come back here and practice in the community.”

The Medical Mile alliance provides the networking infrastructure between its members to attract young medical professionals to South Bend, and to retain them in the area.

"A big benefit of the Medical Mile is that it has enhanced the community's understanding and appreciation of the role health care plays in the economic development of our region. And, it boosts external awareness of the great medical value proposition that South
Bend has to offer," says Paul Meyer, South Bend Clinic’s executive director.

The alliance includes: Memorial Hospital and Health System, South Bend Clinic, South Bend Medical Foundation, Madison Center and Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend. This medical coalition is aligned closely with the City of South Bend to attract the brightest medical talent to the City and assure the long-term economic viability and expansion of the healthcare industry here.

“From the beginning, the Medical Mile was supposed to be an economic development project,” says Bob King, senior vice president of the South Bend Medical Foundation. “We recognized that there were some very significant, large, high-tech, quality organizations within a mile of each other in downtown South Bend, and that by creating this alliance, it would contribute to the economic development of the City of South Bend.”

Following is a closer look at each member of the Medical Mile alliance.

Memorial Hospital and Health System

Memorial Hospital and Health System, South Bend, Ind.

Memorial Hospital and Health System provides stable jobs and compensation to more than 2,800 employees in St. Joseph County – 3,700 employees system-wide. Memorial also serves as a medical treatment center with more than 600 area physicians. The system is second only to the University of Notre Dame in terms of total employment in St. Joseph County.

Memorial Hospital and Health System net revenue from operations was $479 million in 2009, having increased 7.2 percent since 2008. The non-for-profit’s operating income after expenses finished at record levels of $33.4 million in 2009.

And, its economic impact in the area is significant. According to a 2006 study, the Memorial Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Trauma Center, along with nine other Memorial special services, had an impact of $12.1 million in the greater South Bend area.

These types of capital investments contribute to construction, clinical and administrative jobs and make the community more attractive for advanced medical care. When families don’t have to travel as far for advanced care, families can stay together.

Memorial’s largest expansion in its 113-year history was completed in 2009. The surgical suite replacement project boosted the capacity of the hospital to 13 major operating rooms. Room for more suites is planned in a future $21 million expansion.

The new expansion accommodates all types of surgeries, from cardiovascular cases, orthopedics, neurosurgery, trauma and state-of-the-art DaVinci robotic surgery. The project includes renovation of the outpatient surgery center, new sterile processing and admitting areas, and a new main lobby and entrance to Memorial Hospital. Memorial Regional Cancer Center services are also included in the expansion.

The South Bend Clinic

South Bend Clinic, South Bend, Ind.

A $38 million expansion that began in 2007 and was completed in 2009 doubled the size of the downtown facility on Eddy Street from 100,000 to more than 204,000 square feet. In addition to new construction, nearly 65,000 square feet of the existing facility was renovated.

The South Bend Clinic’s expansion created new jobs for more than 110 staff of health care and support workers, including the addition of 10 new physicians on the main medical campus.

The South Bend Clinic now employs a staff of 610 at its five campuses in South Bend, Granger, Portage, Ironwood and New Carlisle, and at its offices in Elkhart and Berrien Springs, Mich. These combined facilities serve nearly 300,000 patients a year.

The South Bend Clinic expansion also prepares the organization for a future where multiple medical disciplines will be handled within the same facility.

“The ability to immediately access all the different colleagues and specialties under one roof, to share expertise and speed up the flow of treatment and diagnosis across all disciplines, will deliver clinical value in terms of improved outcomes, and it should deliver economic value,” says Paul Meyer, South Bend Clinic’s executive director. “Medical knowledge is expanding faster than anybody can keep up with, and so the ability to be in an environment where you’re learning from each other is important.”

South Bend Medical Foundation

The South Bend Medical Foundation exists for the purpose of providing quality and cost- effective laboratory and blood banking services to hospitals, physicians and patients.

South Bend Medical Foundation

The South Bend Medical Foundation’s 800-plus employees provide a full spectrum of quality, cost-effective health care services for communities in Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. By working together with local health-care providers, the South Bend Medical Foundation preserves the critical relationship between laboratory, physician and patient.

Its couriers drive 2.2 million miles a year throughout the Midwest, collecting and delivering test samples. The testing revenues garnered from the surrounding states and communities beyond the South Bend area are well over $25 million annually. The South Bend Medical Foundation’s total net revenue of all testing and services, in Michiana and beyond, is in excess of $100 million. Total payroll for the foundation is estimated at between $50 million and $60 million.

Officials at the South Bend Medical Foundation anticipate the following future trends:

• The Foundation’s vital role as a regional reference laboratory will continue to expand. This provides high-tech testing services to communities that otherwise could not afford them. It also provides communities in the area access to state-of-the-art testing technologies.

• The South Bend Medical Foundation will provide pathology testing services to more areas in the Midwest beyond South Bend.

• The South Bend Medical Foundation will increase its ability to provide blood products. It will do so by working with Marion General Hospital and Elkhart General Hospital to locate more donor centers, and it plans to develop a network of bloodmobiles.

Madison Center

Madison Center dates back to 1949 when the “Mental Hygiene Clinic,” as it was formerly known, operated from a donated house on West Colfax Street in South Bend. The clinic moved to its present location along Niles Avenue in South Bend in 1980.

Madison Center, South Bend, Ind.

Today, Madison Center is a community mental-health facility providing a range of inpatient and outpatient mental-health services to meet the needs of the region’s residents. As a not-for-profit organization, Madison Center serves patients in St. Joseph, Elkhart, LaPorte, Marshall and Porter Counties in northern Indiana. It has grown to one of the largest mental-health facilities in Indiana with just under 800 employees and a $55 million annual budget.

“Our involvement in The Medical Mile will help both Madison Center and the community by insuring the integration and involvement of behavioral health in the delivery of health care services and the quality of life for residents,” says Madison Center CEO Kenneth A. Davis. “For the Madison Center, the venture provides a vehicle for collaboration, coordination, integration and education.”

Thanks to the collaborative efforts of members of the Medical Mile, Madison Center was able to recruit Dr. Desiderio “Desi” Pina as the Madison Center’s new chief of psychiatry. In addition to being actively involved in recruitment activities, Pina will hold appointments at a number of the Medical Mile facilities, as well as the University of Notre Dame.

The University of Notre Dame and Madison Center also announced a new joint venture that enhances opportunities for University and Madison researchers.

Although Notre Dame psychologists have conducted research at Madison Center for a number of years, the new venture represents a significant scaling up of the relationship between the two entities. Notre Dame will occupy space in a building on the Madison Center campus for its Department of Psychology researchers who specialize in areas such as geropsychology, and personality and mood disorders. The researchers will gain access to populations in their fields of expertise. The venture also will enhance training opportunities for Notre Dame graduate and undergraduate students interested in behavioral areas.

Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend

Harper Hall will house the joint Notre Dame-IUSM-SB Harper Cancer Institute

The Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend’s (IUSM-SB) move in 2005 to Raclin-Carmichael Hall near Notre Dame brought renewed energy to the school’s mission. Most recently, IUSM-SB formed a partnership with the State of Indiana and the University of Notre Dame to launch the new Harper Cancer Institute. The new Harper Cancer Institute is a $20 million joint effort with Notre Dame. Scheduled to open later this year, the institute will focus on cancer biology and expanded medical school education.

The medical school has about 10 full-time faculty members, each having between five to seven technicians and post-doctoral graduate students in their laboratories. All are supported by 15 full-time administrative staff and a number of part-time clinicians. Other lecturers include up to six part-time faculty members and 30-40 clinicians from the community.

The impact of research-based education on the area’s economy is profound. Over the past four years, the school has attracted nationally known researchers who brought significant funding to the medical school and community. Each is now fully funded with a series of grants that will have an estimated economic impact of more than $30 million over the course of five to seven years. These funds are spent on hiring technicians, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, along with buying supplies and equipment.

Looking ahead, Dr. Navari, IUSM-SB’s assistant dean and director, notes that research will be a key area of growth.

“In the past five years, we have significantly expanded the faculty and support staff, and now have major research programs in genetics, cancer, immunology and sexual diseases,” he says. “We are now recruiting faculty not only to be good teachers for the medical students, but also to establish high-level research programs.

“This significantly adds to the community in terms of the economy, but it also is establishing a significant research base. As we partner with Notre Dame and Innovation Park on many of these projects, it really enhances the whole research complex that we are trying to build here that will dramatically influence the economic impact for the region.”

Research will continue to expand with the opening of the Harper Cancer Institute in fall 2010.

It is often said the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This certainly is true of South Bend’s Medical Mile, given its wide-ranging and deep medical, research and economic benefits for the area.