Elizabeth Berenz’s 7-year-old son Arthur has a rare, genetic neurodevelopmental disorder that leaves him unable to stand or walk independently.
But when he’s in the warm-water therapy pool at Arlington Pediatric Therapy in Arlington Heights, he becomes buoyant. His face lights up as he’s able to stride around, Berenz says.
“It’s like a different world when he’s in the pool,” she says. “It’s magical for him.”
His mother says Arthur has been receiving physical therapy since he was an infant and has bonded with his aqua therapist at Arlington Pediatric Therapy, where he has been going since 2021.
But Berenz, who lives in Highland Park, says it was “awful” to learn that Lurie Children’s Hospital is planning to shut down the practice on Aug. 15. The hospital acquired the 43-year-old independent therapy practice in February 2023.
Families with children who receive therapy there — one employee estimated there are at least 700 pediatric clients a week — recently got a letter from Lurie Children’s saying the hospital made “the difficult decision to close” the facility because it’s opening a Lurie Children’s outpatient center in Schaumburg in the fall. The new, 75,000-square-foot facility at 1895 Arbor Glen Blvd. will have primary care, ancillary and diagnostic services and offer orthotics and prosthetics, laboratory and pharmacy services and have an ambulatory infusion center.
The letter urged parents to use the hospital’s cost estimate tool because “you may or may not have higher out-of-pocket costs when receiving care at a hospital outpatient center.”
Many parents say they are worried that the closing will make it difficult for their children to get the services they need at Lurie Children’s new facility, which won’t offer aqua therapy.
“There seems to be very little concern on the part of Lurie’s about what families are going to do now,” says Berenz, who dreads having to search for a new facility that accepts the family’s insurance.
An employee of Arlington Pediatric Therapy says about 40 therapists were told they could apply for seven open positions at the new facility in Schaumburg.
Lurie Children’s Hospital declined an interview request and would not confirm the planned staff cuts or the number of affected clients.
Lurie Children’s spokeswoman Julianne Bardele says: “We are working diligently to make the transition as smooth as possible and support those impacted, including working with impacted team members to explore transitioning their role to other open positions at Lurie Children’s. For our patients, we will be offering transition of care services to our other locations.”
Lauren Hutchins, of Arlington Heights, says the announced closure “felt like a gut punch.”
Hutchins’s daughter Vera, 6, has been going to Arlington Pediatric Therapy since she was 3 months old to address developmental delays due to a genetic mutation. With weekly therapy, her mother says, Vera was able to crawl at 15 months and walk at 2. She’s now able to speak in short sentences.
“She meets all the milestones, eventually,” Hutchins says. “It’s just on her own timeline.”
But now Hutchins is worried that a different payment structure could upend that.
Vera receives physical, occupational and speech therapy on the same day, which the family’s insurance counts as one visit, Hutchins says. That’s important because covered visits are capped at 60 per year after a $5,000 deductible. Vera also receives horse therapy at another facility.
If another facility is more expensive or spreads out her therapy, Vera could quickly use up her 60 visits before the year is over, her mother says.
Hutchins is also concerned about losing a physical therapist who has been with Vera since she was a baby and is “like family.”
Closing a facility that’s popular with hundreds of families “doesn’t make any sense,” Hutchins says.
Jenna Jones, a registered nurse whose daughter Sofia received therapy at Arlington Pediatric Therapy for about two years after having open-heart surgery at 10 weeks old, says her daughter’s recovery “is 100% because of them.
“They made my daughter feel very human,” Jones says. And the therapist “really got to know my daughter. There was constant reassurance.”
Now, her nephews are clients, and Jones worries about them.
“I know how much they’ve progressed,” she says. “What are they going to do? Where are they going to go?”
