Midwest Express Clinic pledges $100,000 for COVID-19 Relief
As Midwest Express Clinic expands, so does its quest to help give back the communities it serves
As Midwest Express Clinic has expanded to unprecedented heights, so has the urgent healthcare company’s commitment to philanthropy and sponsorship of programs across Northwest Indiana and Northern Illinois.
The business plans to commit at least $100,000 to community activities and nonprofit organizations in 2020 and has been involved in dozens of recent local philanthropic and community efforts.
“We’re a local community urgent care and we’re highly invested in ensuring our communities thrive,” said Kate Cunningham, Human Resources and Operations. “This is at the heart of what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Midwest Express Clinic was launched in Munster, Indiana, in 2012. That location remains Midwest Express Clinic’s busiest, with 100-plus patient visits per day. The business spans from Crown Point, Indiana, to the east and Willowbrook, Illinois, to the west. The furthest northern location is Skokie, Illinois, while Bourbonnais, Illinois, serves as the most southern spot currently.
The company recently expanded with five new locations in Chicago city proper plus an additional clinic in Merrillville, Indiana, and now has about 160 employees, according to Kaitlyn Steinberg, Midwest Express Clinic’s Director of Operations.
Highlights of Midwest Express Clinic’s efforts to help communities include:
- At a Feed My Starving Children event, MEC employees helped pack 14,472 meals – enough to feed 40 children for an entire year.
- Nurse Practitioner Jessica Borst helped lined up more than 100 donations of clothing, shoes, sleeping bags, blankets, gift cards for food, coats, and toiletries for homeless shelters.
- MEC gave free gifts for kids, free B12 shots for parents, and free food for everyone at a community event at the North Township Trustee office in Hammond.
- Midwest Express Clinic employees served meals at Pacific Garden Mission – a homeless center on the South Side of Chicago.
- MEC personnel served 200 free hot meals at 25th annual Feed the Hungry event in Gary.
“Midwest Express Clinic is supported through our local communities,” Cunningham said. “That’s why we’re so involved and really value giving back, improving, and developing the communities we’re directly a part of.”
The business also has had numerous sponsorships, including for softball teams in Bourbonnais, Bradley, and Lowell; sponsorship of the Sportsplex/Darien Park District; and the Southland Center in Lynwood.
The company also has led a Toys For Tots toy giveaway, donated to Half Way Home Animal Rescue, and also sponsored an Out of Darkness Walk Team in Bourbonnais.
Midwest Express Clinic’s urgent care facilities offer convenient alternatives to a standard emergency room or primary care doctor appointment for illness or injuries. Midwest Express Clinic specializes in injury care, illness care, family care, women’s health, and labs, testing and X-Rays. The company also has trendier types of services like Botox injections, Vitamin B12 shots and $35 baby gender reveals.
Consumer Reports noted the boom of urgent care facilities throughout the United States, with an increase from 6,400 in 2014 to 8,100 in 2018 – and up to an additional 600 expected to open in 2019. Business Insider published a study from in the Annals of Emergency Medicine that showed urgent care center costs were about 10 times less than ER treatment costs for patients with the same diagnosis.
The majority of Midwest Express Clinic’s patients are ages 24-40 and female (62 percent), although the clinics serve anyone from newborns to those age 65-plus. Well over 300,000 patients are seen annually. Most patients visit the clinics from within five miles of where they live.
