OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, located in Peoria, Illinois, United States, is a teaching hospital for the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria and part of the OSF Healthcare System. The Center, which is the largest hospital in the Peoria metropolitan area and in central Illinois, is designated by the state of Illinois as the Level I adult and pediatric regional trauma center for a 26-county region in mid-Illinois. OSF Saint Francis owns the Children's Hospital of Illinois, the OSF Saint Francis Heart Hospital, the Illinois Neurological Institute, and the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing, which are all located either in or near the Medical Center. The hospital is a clinical training hospital for many medical students, interns, residents, and fellows of the Peoria campus of the University of IllinoisCollege of Medicine. It is the largest Level I trauma center for adults and children between the Chicago, Rockford and St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the fourth largest hospital in all of Illinois. The hospital offers adult and pediatric renal transplantation and adult pancreatic transplantation; most of the time, adult, and especially, pediatric, cardiac transplantation cases are referred to tertiary care academic medical transplantation centers in Chicago or St. Louis, though there are facilities and surgeons and physicians available for cardiac transplantation at the Center's Heart Institute and at the Children's Hospital, and they have been performed there repeatedly. The hospital offers advanced burn care, hyperbaric, and debridement and grafting services for both children and adults, and sometimes, if need be, can transfer very severe cases to the certified state burn units in Springfield, Chicago or St. Louis. The Center's new Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center is used for bioengineering, biochemical research, research on new devices and tissues and grafts, and medical and nursing and bioengineering training. The hospital made national and international headlines in the health care field on April 9, 2013, when a toddler, Hannah Warren, about 3, from South Korea who was born without a trachea received an artificial trachea that incorporated, with the plastic, her own living stem cells, in the first bio-engineered transplant on a child in the U.S. and the first bio-engineered trachea transplant in the world. It is the first stem cell procedure of any kind at the Catholic medical center. The major 11-hour surgical procedure was led by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini of Sweden's Karolinska Institute, along with top surgical and medical officials from OSF. However, she died three months later from complications.
Awards
In 2000, the Center was listed among the "Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems" by Hospitals & Health Networks, an indicator of the degree to which information technology was used in the Center. The Center received a Lantern Award in 2013 for nursing care in the emergency department. The Center is also the #1 hospital in the state of Illinois for organ recovery. In 2017, it was ranked fifth by U.S. News & World Report in three-way tie for the state's top hospitals.
History
The first hospital unit of what later became the Center was established in 1876 by a group of Franciscan Sisters who had been sent to Peoria, Illinois from a German expatriate group settled in Iowa City, Iowa. In 1877, the Sisters who had migrated to Peoria were granted permission to form an independent religious community and became "The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, Peoria, Illinois". In 2009 and 2010, the Medical Center built a new emergency room. A new Children's Hospital of Illinois was built, with a new Level I pediatric and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit and emergency room. The Milestone Project was the largest expansion in the hospital's history. The hospital is now home to nearly all pediatric and adult services.
Organization
The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis is established as a non-profit organization and is the parent company of OSF Healthcare, which in turn is the operator of the OSF Healthcare System. The religious order of nuns and the hospital is not considered a part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria, but still works closely with it. The System consists of 12 facilities in Illinois, including the Center, plus one in Escanaba, Michigan.
