ABOUT

Christie Clinic is a for-profit and physician-owned health care center with 18 locations dispersed across the east-central Illinois area. These facilities range in size and capabilities, from very small and located in the County Market grocery store on Kirby Avenue to the much larger central location in downtown Champaign. As the clinic’s website declares, the mission is to provide the health care that is necessary for long life but the encompassing vision is to “Create a Healthy Community.”

HISTORY

Christie Clinic was founded in 1929 in Champaign, Illinois (About Christie Clinic), by Dr. C. W. Christie, Dr. J. W. Powel, Dr. J. P. McKinney and Dr. C. E. Albers (Urbana Daily Courier, p. 4).

The clinic purchased the Twin City Building and Loan Building at Neil Street and Clark Street in 1936 in order to expand and update the clinic. Previously the clinic had been operating out of the fifth floor of the Lincoln Building. This expansion saw the clinic add 42 exam rooms, a Physiotherapy Department, and a Radiology Department equipped with lead-lined rooms (Daily Illini, p. 2).

In 1997 Christie became affiliated with ProMedCo, a large company in Fort Worth, Texas. According to then Executive Direct, Stan Piotrowski, joining with the firm “allow[ed] Christie to continue to be locally managed and provide access to financial resources to expand and remain in the forefront in the rapidly changing health care environment.” At this time Christie decided to begin moving away from paper patient medical records in favor of digital records. At this point Christie Clinic was the largest clinic to be affiliated with ProMedCo as well as the first in the state to do so (Pressey, 1997).

Christie’s affiliation with ProMedCo was terminated in May of 2001 after PMC filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Christie was able to buy back its management contract and Central Illinois Bank handled the financing of the purchase. The executive vice president of the bank had this to say about the clinic: “I think our knowledge of Christie’s stability in the community for so many years certainly went a long way in our decision.... Plus, we do feel, that for health care consumers, having something that’s locally controlled, with the doctors having control, makes it a lot stronger organization.” After this move the clinic was completely owned by 61 of its physicians (Pressey, 2001).
The clinic switched over to its current Electronic Medical/Health Record program in 2002, which meant the eventual end of paper charts for patients and brought about faster and ubiquitous access for doctors. Christie is currently searching for a replacement for this EMR/EHR.

In 2004, plans were announced for the clinic to expand to Danville (Phillips, 2004). The clinic there today has two departments, Family Medicine and OB/GYN, and the convenient care center offers those same specialties as well as Podiatry, General Surgery, Radiology, and Physical Therapy, among others. In 2006 a brand-new radiation oncology center was added at the downtown Champaign clinic location (Pressey, 2006).

That same year plans were announced to build a new campus in northwest Champaign in the Clearview development area, but were soon abandoned because an agreement on the price of the original building could not be reached between CC and the Atkins Group. This expansion plan was reintroduced in 2008, but in the new version the clinic was to retain its location in downtown Champaign, which would be completely remodeled. The expansion was estimated to cost $35 million (Pressey, 2008).

In 2009 Christie Clinic opened its third grocery-store-based convenient care center in the Count Market at Fourth Street and Springfield Avenue. The other two locations are at the County Market stores on Kirby Avenue and Glenn Park Drive, respectively, in Champaign (News-Gazette, 2009).

In April of 2011, Christie Clinic announced plans to begin outsourcing medical transcription work to Nuance Transcription Services, based in Burlington, Massachusetts (Pressey, 2011).

Each April, Christie Clinic hosts a marathon in Champaign, Illinois. Click here to learn more!

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RESOURCES

Pressey, Debra. "Christie Clinic Leaving Downtown Champaign." The News-Gazette[Chamapaign, IL] 19 June 2006.

Pressey, Debra. "Christie Clinic Plans for New Campus Moving Ahead." The News-Gazette [Chamapaign, IL] 1 Nov. 2008.

Pressey, Debra. "Christie Returns to Local Control." The News-Gazette [Champaign, IL] 22 Mar. 2001.

Pressey, Debra. "Christie Sends Transcription Work to Massachusetts." The News-Gazette [Chamapaign, IL] 5 Apr. 2011.

Pressey, Debra. "Christie Teams with ProMedCo." The News-Gazette [Champaign, IL] 22 Oct. 1997.

Pressey, Debra. "Christie, Local Buyers Take over Illinois Marathon." The News-Gazette[Chamapaign, IL] 27 Sept. 2010.

"Shortages Seen without McKinley." Daily Illini [Champaign, IL] 16 Feb. 1972.

This CU wiki entry began as a UIUC research project.  For more on that see Study of UC2B Anchor Institutions' Technology Use