Community Outreach • Community Benefit

As a valuable healthcare resource, NCH has a responsibility to help ensure that all people living in the northwest suburbs have access to basic medical care, regardless of their ability to pay.

For more information on Northwest Community Hospital’s community outreach initiatives, call the Community Services office at 847.618.5570. For information on financial assistance, call 847.618.4542 or click here.

We partner with other organizations to reach out into the community, providing a variety of healthcare programs in various locations including:

Financial assistance

Designed to meet the needs of the uninsured or underinsured

• NCH financial counselors answer questions, contact insurance companies, set up payment plans and facilitate loan applications
• Translation services for non-English speakers
• Details are available in English and Spanish
• The Cancer Financial Assistance Fund helps ensure that families facing cancer can focus on treatment and recovery and not on the sudden financial burden of a life-threatening illness. Includes short-term emergency financial assistance to patients who come to us for cancer treatment.

Reaching out to the community

We partner with local agencies and organizations to provide programs and services for our neighbors in need.

• The Palatine Opportunity Center helps recent immigrant residents obtain jobs, gain access to community services and find affordable healthcare.

Access to quality care

• Mobile Dental Clinic – launched in response to an overwhelming need for dental services for low-income residents of Elk Grove, Palatine and Wheeling townships. Dentists, hygienists and others volunteer their skills and time to treat approximately 2,800 patients each year, many of them young children and senior citizens.
• Access @ Northwest Community – a federally qualified health center established by Access Community Health Network, with support from NCH. The clinic provides quality, affordable, primary health care services to the low-income and medically under-served residents
• Support for the Homeless – providing volunteer medical care and donating laundry service to 12 homeless shelters throughout the northwest suburbs

Sharing knowledge, giving support

A range of free classes, support groups, health screenings and special events on topics and conditions ranging from skin cancer to managing depression.

• Provides services for seniors, including walking clubs, blood pressure clinics and Medicare information sessions.
• Many of our Positively Healthy classes, events and screenings are available for online registration on our website at our Online Events Guide.
• Health World - a children’s museum where more than 200,000 students and families learn about health and medicine each year

Caring for our own

NCH’s commitment to service begins with our 3,900 employees and nearly 1,000 medical staff members. Through innovative benefits, we empower employees to be a part of the community and advance their careers in healthcare.

• A housing assistance program that contributes $5,000 toward a down payment to qualifying employees who want to buy a home within 10 miles of the hospital.
• Helped Northwest Community rank number 50 nationally in Fortune Magazine’s "100 Best Companies To Work For” in 2006.

“Northwest Community Hospital is a trusted medical resource for thousands of people living throughout the northwest suburbs. For those of us living in Arlington Heights, Northwest Community is far more: It is one of our village's largest employers, one of the most active corporate citizens and a true community asset. It is exciting to see how a community hospital has grown over the years to become a world-class center of medical care, education and community service - not just in Arlington Heights, but throughout the region.”

– Arlene Mulder, Mayor, Arlington Heights

• Commitment to patients with limited resources - NCH treats patients who are unable to pay for part or all of their care, providing $ 5.3 million in unreimbursed financial assistance each year.

“Through its many community outreach clinics and financial assistance programs, Northwest Community Hospital provides families the medical care they need at the level all of us expect and deserve. No hospital alone can solve the problem of a growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients, but Northwest Community certainly has demonstrated its commitment to help all patients–rich or poor, insured or not–obtain access to the best possible care.”

– Dick Durbin, United States Senator

Building the area’s Emergency Medical System (EMS) infrastructure – NCH launched the first paramedic program in Illinois in 1972 and the first system in the nation to serve multiple communities. Today, Northwest Community continues to serve as the EMS Resource Hospital for the system, providing education for first responders, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and emergency communications registered nurses within a 375 square-mile area.