Care Center Network - Northwestern University

Participation of Northwestern University Interstitial Lung Diseases and Pulmonary Fibrosis program in the PFF Care Center Network will enhance the clinical care of pulmonary fibrosis patients, will contribute to advancement of clinical and translational research in pulmonary fibrosis, will improve patient advocacy for pulmonary fibrosis, and will enhance the pulmonary fibrosis registry run by the PFF. The ILD/PF program is run by the pulmonary division (30 MDs, 9PhDs) which is part of the department of Internal Medicine (420 physicians), which are part of the 900 strong Northwestern Medicine physician group, which altogether saw 848398 outpatient visits in 2013. The ILD/PF outpatient facilities are associated with Northwestern Hospital, a 2 million square foot 873 bed tertiary teaching hospital in downtown Chicago, which had 10,932 non-obstetrics admissions in 2013. A total of 330 distinct patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and 1980 distinct patients with interstitial lung diseases/pulmonary fibrosis from other causes and were seen by the group physicians, most of whom in the last 5 years. The multidisciplinary NW ILD/PF program gets referrals from Chicago and the surrounding three states, and consists of physicians and researchers from various disciplines with an interest expertise in pulmonary fibrosis. The clinical volume, availability of and interest from all other needed sub-specialties in pulmonary fibrosis, and the availability of the infrastructure at the hospital provides for optimal clinical care of patients with pulmonary fibrosis in our program. Our ILD/PF provides true multidisciplinary care to ILD/PF patients in that not only do multiple disciplines contribute to the care of these patients, but that most diagnostic and therapeutic decisions on most patients are made by a multidisciplinary team which meets on a regular basis. The ILF/PF program has a robust and collaborative basic, translational and clinical research infrastructure and output outlines in a separate section. Research contributions from our program will better help understand the pathobiology of pulmonary fibrosis, eventually leading to understanding of ways to prevent and treat pulmonary fibrosis from various etiologies. The patient support and advocacy measures by our program will result in an improved support for, and awareness of pulmonary fibrosis in the local, regional and national community. Finally, the inclusion of the relatively large numbers of pulmonary fibrosis patients from our programs into the PFF registry will result in a more robust database which will eventually contribute to better care of patients with pulmonary fibrosis.