Emily Chase, PhD, RN, will become the first president of UChicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital in Chicago on Sept. 8. The presidency is the first in Comer Children’s history, created as UChicago Medicine expands pediatric specialty services and maternal care across Chicago’s South Side, south suburbs and Northwest Indiana. Dr. Chase told Becker’s the board’s decision to create a standalone role signals that leadership sees pediatrics as an opportunity.
Dr. Chase most recently served as executive vice president and COO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, overseeing operations for the flagship academic medical center and more than 6,000 employees. She has served UChicago Medicine for 15 years, holding earlier roles including chief nursing officer, interim president and CEO of Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Ill., and vice president of Comer Women’s & Children’s Hospital. The new role reports directly to Tom Jackiewicz, president of the University of Chicago Health System. Comer Children’s is a 172-bed acute care facility and home to one of Illinois’ busiest level 1 pediatric trauma centers and a level 4 neonatal intensive care unit.
“Our board really said we have a lot of opportunities in pediatrics in this space,” Dr. Chase said. “Putting this into a standalone capacity with a standalone president really allows there to be a structure that, as I like to say, wakes up every day and goes to bed every day thinking about how we do more and grow and serve more of the children across Chicagoland and into Northwest Indiana.”
She cited the system’s strength in highly specialized pediatric conditions, including epilepsy and bone marrow transplants, as a foundation for growth, and said there is significant potential still untapped in the market.
On workforce, Dr. Chase said the pandemic pushed UChicago Medicine, which does not have a school of nursing, to build training partnerships across the city. The system has since extended those programs into Chicago high schools, training students to become medical assistants, certified nursing assistants and radiology technicians.
“We now, over the past two years, have gotten those training programs down into high schools in Chicago,” Dr. Chase said. “We’re training our high school students to become medical assistants, certified nursing assistants, radiology technicians, so that they really see a future in healthcare where we hope that they then go on to become other things like respiratory therapists and nurses.”
Comer Children’s includes an obstetrics program, and Dr. Chase said UChicago Medicine is expanding into maternal care as other hospitals scale back. Maternal and infant death rates are up to six times higher in some South Side neighborhoods compared to other areas of the city, according to an American Medical Association report. The system has deployed maternal-fetal medicine specialists into community FQHCs to identify complications earlier and route higher-acuity cases to Comer. The system is also growing its obstetrics program at Ingalls Memorial after years of declining volumes. Dr. Chase said the strategy has been in place for about three years and is beginning to show results.
“We’re stepping into it,” Dr. Chase said of obstetrics and maternal care. “We’re really starting to see our community partners see us as their place to refer higher level cases, which is amazing.”
On AI, Dr. Chase said Comer is planning to pilot clinical AI tools with patients 12 and older and use the teen advisory board to evaluate them. Ambient listening is already deployed across the health system. She said the goal is to get clinical information to patients and families faster, and to engage the patient population most fluent in the tools before broader deployment.
“Our patient population is actually able to give us more informed feedback on what AI solutions actually look like,” Dr. Chase said. “We’re thinking about really rolling them out to patients 12 and older in Comer, which I think is a really innovative solution. At least I’ve not heard of anybody else doing it.”
She said the teen advisory board will focus on two areas: AI and technology, and food.
“Families are probably going to use AI anyway,” Dr. Chase said. “How do we then really partner with the families to make sure that we’re bringing those solutions to them as an acceptable healthcare solution, not something that they feel like they didn’t get the right information from their healthcare provider, so they go to ChatGPT?”
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