Decatur Memorial Hospital has joined The BJC Collaborative, a collaboration among health care systems throughout Illinois, Missouri and Eastern Kansas.

BJC HealthCare (St. Louis, Mo.), Memorial Health System (Springfield, Ill.), Saint Luke’s Health System (Kansas City, Mo.) and CoxHealth (Springfield, Mo.) founded the Collaborative in October 2012 to improve the quality and efficiency of health care in the region. Blessing Health System in Quincy, Ill., joined the Collaborative in May 2013, Southern Illinois Healthcare in Carbondale, Ill., joined in September 2013 and Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System in Mattoon, Ill., joined in November 2015.

While remaining independent, member and participant organizations collaborate to achieve savings, implement clinical programs and services to improve access to and quality of health care for patients, lower health care costs and create additional efficiencies that will benefit patients and communities.

A significant benefit of the BJC Collaborative is being able to tap into the best practices developed by the organizations to positively impact Decatur Memorial Hospital patients and its employees. Members of the Collaborative also combine purchasing to provide the latest technology and health care services to local communities.

“The BJC Collaborative makes Decatur Memorial Hospital an even stronger hospital in our community,” said Timothy D. Stone Jr., President & CEO, Decatur Memorial Hospital. “By aligning with other providers of high quality health care services in the Midwest, together, we can provide even higher quality health care to our patients.”

Currently, the Collaborative comprises 6,160 hospital beds, nearly 60,000 employees and 7,900 employed and affiliated physicians across their adjacent service areas. Decatur Memorial Hospital has 300 licensed beds, 326 medical staff physicians and 2,142 employees.

Decatur Memorial Hospital joins the Collaborative under the sponsorship of Memorial Health System.

“Memorial Health System is pleased to sponsor Decatur Memorial Hospital,” said Edgar J. Curtis, President & CEO, Memorial Health System. “We are confident this will be a mutually beneficial relationship for the Collaborative members and the patients we serve.”

The BJC Collaborative offers Decatur Memorial Hospital the opportunity to participate in multiple existing initiatives, to the benefit of Decatur Memorial Hospital and the communities it serves. Those initiatives include:

• Population Health Management – population health information and assessment, physician recruitment and engagement strategies, including Accountable Care Organization and medical home development.


• Clinical and Service Quality – performance improvement, staff development and training, including eLearning, management and leadership development, clinical skills training, clinical decision support, safety event reporting and emergency preparedness.


• Capital Asset Management – supply chain relationships, facilities design, clinical engineering, technology evaluation, energy conservation and facilities management.


• Information Systems and Technology – meaningful use of health IT, data center management, data warehousing, software applications, hardware configurations and emerging technologies, data security and patient confidentiality.