Tag Archives: Provident Hospital

Good People Doing Good Things — Dr. Daniel Ivankovich

Posted on by under Good people doing good things, Social commentary

I first wrote and published this post in February 2018 and I think Dr. Ivankovich deserves a redux, for he is truly one of the ‘good people’ in this world. 

Every Wednesday, I go in search of good people who are giving of themselves to others.  They are not hard to find, but so often go unnoticed because they are busy taking care of business and do not have time to toot their own horns as others may do.

It seems that we only hear about the bad things in Chicago:  the crime, drugs, gangs and violence.  But there are some really good people doing their best to help people survive and thrive.  Meet Dr. Daniel Ivankovich.

IvankovichIn 2010 after seeing so many in the Chicago area who were left without the ability to pay for medical care turned away, Dr. Ivankovich decided it was time to do something positive.  He and his wife, Karla, started the nonprofit OnePatient Global Health Initiative, a non-profit “designed to establish sustainable programs of outreach, prevention and patient education at multiple locations throughout the disparate areas of Chicago.”

Today, Ivankovich runs three clinics in Chicago and performs more than 600 surgeries a year. He says more than 100,000 people have benefited from the program.

“I know I can’t fix everybody. My goal is to be the battering ram to help break down the barriers to get these patients the care and the resources they need.”

In an interview last year, Dr. Ivankovich was asked why his mission is to help people without insurance.

Ivankovich-2“Many people who are uninsured or on Medicaid are forced to ignore their health issues. So when they can’t put it off anymore, they use emergency rooms as their primary source of medical treatment and aren’t able to access any follow-up care, which could potentially cause a basic injury to become life-threatening.

Oftentimes when a patient’s finally made it to our clinic, they tell me they’ve been hung up on by 10 or 12 other physician providers because they don’t have insurance. It’s heartbreaking when you hear the struggles that the patients have to go through for the basics.”

Patients are never turned away from the OnePatient clinics for lack of insurance or inability to pay.  But Dr. Ivankovich’s good works don’t stop there.  After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Ivankovich and his team airlifted thousands of tons of medical supplies to the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. He collaborated with Team Rubicon1 USA to set up mobile forward-assist surgical teams (F.A.S.T.) to treat hundreds of Haitians with severe injuries. For his work in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, Ivankovich was named one of Chicago magazine’s 2010 Chicagoans of the Year, and the National Association of Social Workers Illinois 2010 Public Citizen of the Year.

Haitian earthquake victim

Dr. Ivankovich with victim of earthquake in Haiti, 2010

Now, a few coincidences came into play at this point in my research.  First, among Ivankovich’s several nicknames, he is often called Dr. Dan (the others include Chicago Slim and Reverend Doctor D).  Remember my black history persona from Monday, about another Dr. Dan — Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who founded Provident Hospital, the first interracial hospital in the nation?  Well, guess where Dr. Dan Ivankovich practiced from 2002 to 2007?  Yep, none other than Provident Hospital!  Not relevant, but I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

While at Provident Hospital, Dr. Ivankovich was a bit of a rebel, apparently, criticizing the hospital for spending too little on patient care and too much on administrative salaries and non-patient costs.  He and two other like-minded doctors were dismissed in April 2007.

Ivankovich bluesDr. Dan knows how to lighten up and have some fun, too, and he is a founding member of the Chicago Blues All-Stars.  Ivankovich provides vocals and plays electric guitar. He has played alongside many Chicago blues and rock musicians, such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley.  Check out the short clip (1:11) … Dr. Dan is the one in the light-coloured shirt and the dark hat.

I frequently criticize the medical industry, for that is what it is becoming, an industry, rather than the humanitarian field I once thought it was.  But medical professionals like Dr. Ivankovich are the exception and deserve to be in the spotlight.  In short, we need a lot more like him.

1 Another coincidence — I wrote about Team Rubicon in a ‘Good People” post last October!

Black History — Dr. Dan

Posted on by under Good people doing good things, History, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

This morning’s ‘good people’ post and related comments helped determine my path for this afternoon’s post.  Yes, there is a historic and crucial impeachment trial taking place this week, but I’m sure I will have ample opportunity to opine about that later.  For this afternoon, though, I want to highlight another ‘good people’ from the annals of Black History.  I wrote this post in February 2018, but since then I have many new readers, so to most of you, it will likely be new.  I hope you enjoy reading about a truly great humanitarian, Dr. Dan.

As I mentioned in a post last week, I want to take some time this month to highlight the accomplishments of some of our African-American brothers and sisters in honour of Black History Month.  We all know about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Bessie Coleman, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and many others who are routinely highlighted during Black History Month, so I wanted to take an opportunity to seek out some who we may not have heard of before.  Today, I am focusing on one remarkable man …

Daniel Hale WilliamsDaniel Hale Williams III, was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania in 1856, five years before the start of the Civil War. His father, Daniel Hale Williams II, was a barber, having inherited a barbershop, but more importantly, he also worked with the Equal Rights League, a black civil rights organization.

When Daniel was only ten years old, his father died, and young Daniel was sent to live with family friends in Baltimore, Maryland.  Early on, Daniel became a shoemaker’s apprentice, but he didn’t really like making shoes, and ultimately decided to return to his family, who had since moved to Illinois.

Once in Illinois, Daniel thought to follow in his father’s footsteps and took up barbering, but he didn’t really like that either.  He wanted something more, and part of what he wanted was knowledge, so he sought to pursue an education.  As such, he became an apprentice to a surgeon, Dr. Henry Palmer, and at the same time attended Chicago Medical College.

Having finally found his calling, Williams set up a practice on Chicago’s South side after graduating from medical school, and he also returned to Chicago Medical College to teach anatomy.  He was known as “Doctor Dan” by his patients.

Due to the discrimination of the day, African-American citizens were still barred from being admitted to hospitals and black doctors were refused staff positions. Firmly believing this needed to change, in May 1891, Williams opened Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the nation’s first hospital with a nursing and intern program that had a racially integrated staff. The facility, where Williams worked as a surgeon, was publicly championed by famed abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass.

On July 9th, 1893, an oppressively hot day, James Cornish had worked a long day and was too wound up to go straight home. James thought to stop at his favourite bar to unwind a bit, but, as will happen when the heat gets to people, a fight soon broke out, and Mr. Cornish had the bad luck to become embroiled in the brawl, causing him to end up with a knife in his heart!

Turns out it was Cornish’s lucky day, for he was taken to Provident Hospital and placed in the care of none other than our Dr. Dan.   At first Cornish seemed to recover, but the next day he rapidly lost ground. Williams, despite having little medical equipment and no idea what was going on inside of Cornish’s chest, decided to be the first in the world to crack open a human chest and try to fix a human heart.

Williams found a tiny tear in the pericardium, the sac that surrounds the heart, and with just a few small stitches, was able to save the life of Mr. James Cornish!  This with no X-rays, no antibiotics, no reliable anesthesia. Cornish spent fifty-one days in the hospital, but he lived. A surgery that had been inconceivable at the beginning of July was, by the end of September, a recognized medical possibility.

The following year, 1894, Williams moved to Washington, D.C., where he was appointed the chief surgeon of the Freedmen’s Hospital, which provided care for formerly enslaved African Americans. The facility had fallen into neglect and had a high mortality rate. Williams worked diligently on revitalization, improving surgical procedures, increasing specialization, launching ambulance services and continuing to provide opportunities for black medical professionals, among other feats. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association, a professional organization for black medical practitioners, as an alternative to the American Medical Association, which didn’t allow African-American membership.

Williams left Freedmen’s Hospital in 1898. He married Alice Johnson, and the newlyweds moved to Chicago, where Williams returned to his work at Provident. Soon after the turn of the century, he worked at Cook County Hospital and later at St. Luke’s, a large medical institution with ample resources.

Beginning in 1899, Williams also made annual trips to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was a voluntary visiting clinical professor at Meharry Medical College for more than two decades. He became a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

Sadly, Daniel Hale Williams III experienced a debilitating stroke in 1926 and died five years later, on August 4, 1931, in Idlewild, Michigan.

I know of very few, if any, in the field of medicine whose contributions rival Daniel Williams’.  This is a man whose hand I wish I could shake, a man I wish I could know, a man I am honoured to highlight during Black History Month 2018.

I so enjoyed the research and writing of this post.  A special thanks to John Fioravanti for reminding me to step away from Trumpopia for a minute and focus on somebody who is truly deserving of my time and attention.

Good People Doing Good Things — Dr. Daniel Ivankovich

Posted on by under Good people doing good things, Social commentary

Every Wednesday, I go in search of good people who are giving of themselves to others.  They are not hard to find, but so often go unnoticed because they are busy taking care of business and do not have time to toot their own horns as others may do.

It seems that we only hear about the bad things in Chicago:  the crime, drugs, gangs and violence.  But there are some really good people doing their best to help people survive and thrive.  Meet Dr. Daniel Ivankovich.

IvankovichIn 2010 after seeing so many in the Chicago area who were left without the ability to pay for medical care turned away, Dr. Ivankovich decided it was time to do something positive.  He and his wife, Karla, started the nonprofit OnePatient Global Health Initiative, a non-profit “designed to establish sustainable programs of outreach, prevention and patient education at multiple locations throughout the disparate areas of Chicago.”

Today, Ivankovich runs three clinics in Chicago and performs more than 600 surgeries a year. He says more than 100,000 people have benefited from the program.

“I know I can’t fix everybody. My goal is to be the battering ram to help break down the barriers to get these patients the care and the resources they need.”

In an interview last year, Dr. Ivankovich was asked why his mission is to help people without insurance.

Ivankovich-2“Many people who are uninsured or on Medicaid are forced to ignore their health issues. So when they can’t put it off anymore, they use emergency rooms as their primary source of medical treatment and aren’t able to access any follow-up care, which could potentially cause a basic injury to become life-threatening.

Oftentimes when a patient’s finally made it to our clinic, they tell me they’ve been hung up on by 10 or 12 other physician providers because they don’t have insurance. It’s heartbreaking when you hear the struggles that the patients have to go through for the basics.”

Patients are never turned away from the OnePatient clinics for lack of insurance or inability to pay.  But Dr. Ivankovich’s good works don’t stop there.  After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Ivankovich and his team airlifted thousands of tons of medical supplies to the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. He collaborated with Team Rubicon1 USA to set up mobile forward-assist surgical teams (F.A.S.T.) to treat hundreds of Haitians with severe injuries. For his work in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, Ivankovich was named one of Chicago magazine’s 2010 Chicagoans of the Year, and the National Association of Social Workers Illinois 2010 Public Citizen of the Year.

Haitian earthquake victim

Dr. Ivankovich with victim of earthquake in Haiti, 2010

Now, a few coincidences came into play at this point in my research.  First, among Ivankovich’s several nicknames, he is often called Dr. Dan (the others include Chicago Slim and Reverend Doctor D).  Remember my black history persona from Monday, about another Dr. Dan — Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who founded Provident Hospital, the first interracial hospital in the nation?  Well, guess where Dr. Dan Ivankovich practiced from 2002 to 2007?  Yep, none other than Provident Hospital!  Not relevant, but I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

While at Provident Hospital, Dr. Ivankovich was a bit of a rebel, apparently, criticizing the hospital for spending too little on patient care and too much on administrative salaries and non-patient costs.  He and two other like-minded doctors were dismissed in April 2007.

Ivankovich bluesDr. Dan knows how to lighten up and have some fun, too, and he is a founding member of the Chicago Blues All-Stars.  Ivankovich provides vocals and plays electric guitar. He has played alongside many Chicago blues and rock musicians, such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley.  Check out the short clip (1:11) … Dr. Dan is the one in the light-coloured shirt and the dark hat.

I frequently criticize the medical industry, for that is what it is becoming, an industry, rather than the humanitarian field I once thought it was.  But medical professionals like Dr. Ivankovich are the exception and deserve to be in the spotlight.  In short, we need a lot more like him.

1 Another coincidence — I wrote about Team Rubicon in a ‘Good People” post last October!

Black History — Dr. Dan

Posted on by under Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

As I mentioned in a post last week, I want to take some time this month to highlight the accomplishments of some of our African-American brothers and sisters in honour of Black History Month.  We all know about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Bessie Coleman, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and many others who are routinely highlighted during Black History Month, so I wanted to take an opportunity to seek out some who we may not have heard of before.  Today, I am focusing on one remarkable man …

Daniel Hale WilliamsDaniel Hale Williams III, was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania in 1856, five years before the start of the Civil War. His father, Daniel Hale Williams II, was a barber, having inherited a barbershop, but more importantly, he also worked with the Equal Rights League, a black civil rights organization.

When Daniel was only ten years old, his father died, and young Daniel was sent to live with family friends in Baltimore, Maryland.  Early on, Daniel became a shoemaker’s apprentice, but he didn’t really like making shoes, and ultimately decided to return to his family, who had since moved to Illinois.

Once in Illinois, Daniel thought to follow in his father’s footsteps and took up barbering, but he didn’t really like that either.  He wanted something more, and part of what he wanted was knowledge, so he sought to pursue an education.  As such, he became an apprentice to a surgeon, Dr. Henry Palmer, and at the same time attended Chicago Medical College.

Having finally found his calling, Williams set up a practice on Chicago’s South side after graduating from medical school, and he also returned to Chicago Medical College to teach anatomy.  He was known as “Doctor Dan” by his patients.

Due to the discrimination of the day, African-American citizens were still barred from being admitted to hospitals and black doctors were refused staff positions. Firmly believing this needed to change, in May 1891, Williams opened Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the nation’s first hospital with a nursing and intern program that had a racially integrated staff. The facility, where Williams worked as a surgeon, was publicly championed by famed abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass.

On July 9th, 1893, an oppressively hot day, James Cornish had worked a long day and was too wound up to go straight home. James thought to stop at his favourite bar to unwind a bit, but, as will happen when the heat gets to people, a fight soon broke out, and Mr. Cornish had the bad luck to become embroiled in the brawl, causing him to end up with a knife in his heart!

Turns out it was Cornish’s lucky day, for he was taken to Provident Hospital and placed in the care of none other than our Dr. Dan.   Aat first Cornish seemed to recover, but the next day he rapidly lost ground. Williams, despite having little medical equipment and no idea what was going on inside of Cornish’s chest, decided to be the first in the world to crack open a human chest and try to fix a human heart.

Williams found a tiny tear in the pericardium, the sac that surrounds the heart, and with just a few small stitches, was able to save the life of Mr. James Cornish!  This with no X-rays, no antibiotics, no reliable anesthesia. Cornish spent fifty-one days in the hospital, but he lived. A surgery that had been inconceivable at the beginning of July was, by the end of September, a recognized medical possibility.

The following year, 1894, Williams moved to Washington, D.C., where he was appointed the chief surgeon of the Freedmen’s Hospital, which provided care for formerly enslaved African Americans. The facility had fallen into neglect and had a high mortality rate. Williams worked diligently on revitalization, improving surgical procedures, increasing specialization, launching ambulance services and continuing to provide opportunities for black medical professionals, among other feats. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association, a professional organization for black medical practitioners, as an alternative to the American Medical Association, which didn’t allow African-American membership.

Williams left Freedmen’s Hospital in 1898. He married Alice Johnson, and the newlyweds moved to Chicago, where Williams returned to his work at Provident. Soon after the turn of the century, he worked at Cook County Hospital and later at St. Luke’s, a large medical institution with ample resources.

Beginning in 1899, Williams also made annual trips to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was a voluntary visiting clinical professor at Meharry Medical College for more than two decades. He became a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

Sadly, Daniel Hale Williams III experienced a debilitating stroke in 1926 and died five years later, on August 4, 1931, in Idlewild, Michigan.

I know of very few, if any, in the field of medicine whose contributions rival Daniel Williams’.  This is a man whose hand I wish I could shake, a man I wish I could know, a man I am honoured to highlight during Black History Month 2018.

I so enjoyed the research and writing of this post.  A special thanks to John Fioravanti for reminding me to step away from Trumpopia for a minute and focus on somebody who is truly deserving of my time and attention.