Our History

DuPage Med­ical Group began 50 years ago as the brain­child of Dr. Robert McCray, a local sur­geon and health care vision­ary. Dr. McCray’s advance­ments helped rede­fine the physi­cian prac­tice in DuPage Coun­ty into the kind of per­son­al­ized, lead­ing-edge health care that until then was rarely avail­able out­side the uni­ver­si­ty med­ical or research cen­ter settings.

The For­ma­tion

In the ear­ly 1960s, Dr. McCray was still new to med­i­cine as a pri­vate-prac­tice sur­geon in Glen Ellyn, Ill., when he began re-imag­in­ing the physi­cian prac­tice as a way to give local patients access to advanced care spe­cial­ists and relat­ed med­ical ser­vices all under one roof. A rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea at a time when only 11 physi­cians prac­ticed in Glen Ellyn with few med­ical spe­cial­ists, Dr. McCray antic­i­pat­ed many aspects of group prac­tice now con­sid­ered commonplace.

Dr. McCray vis­it­ed 35 clin­ics across the coun­try, includ­ing Minnesota’s pres­ti­gious Mayo Clin­ic, exam­in­ing spe­cif­ic ele­ments that made group prac­tices suc­cess­ful. He teamed with sev­er­al local physi­cians – fel­low sur­geon and part­ner Dr. Glen Asselmeier, internists Drs. Joe Crum­rine, Fred Kuharich and James Erlen­born and pedi­a­tri­cians Drs. James Ver­coe and William Kin­dra­chuk. Dr. Gary Chris­tensen joined the team a short time lat­er after com­plet­ing a res­i­den­cy in obstet­rics and gynecology.

The group broke ground in August 1963 on a 12,000-square-foot build­ing and agreed on call­ing itself the Glen Ellyn Clin­ic, part­ly in homage to the Mayo Clinic.

Built with Innovation

The Glen Ellyn Clin­ic opened its doors on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1964, with eight physi­cians, 15 nurs­es and a staff of lab tech­ni­cians and admin­is­tra­tive per­son­nel. The clin­ic offered a host of inno­va­tions that were ground­break­ing at the time – a lab­o­ra­to­ry, X‑ray ser­vices and a phar­ma­cy, all onsite. The clin­ic offered evening hours, around-the-clock pedi­atric care and an urgent care depart­ment. For the first time, DuPage Coun­ty patients had access to a full range of spe­cial­ty health care – surgery, inter­nal med­i­cine, obstet­rics and gyne­col­o­gy, pedi­atrics and ancil­lary ser­vices – in one location.

The clin­ic embraced admin­is­tra­tive inno­va­tions as well. Physi­cians com­bined their nurs­ing and office staffs, med­ical records and billing func­tions. Accounts receiv­able were pooled and a bonus struc­ture imple­ment­ed based on per­for­mance and clin­ic prof­itabil­i­ty. The founders also ensured part­ner­ships would be avail­able to younger physicians.

After it’s first year of oper­a­tion, the clin­ic was see­ing 300 new patients a month. By 1970, the part­ner­ship had grown to 25 physi­cians, while office and lab space was added with a 24,000-square-foot clin­ic expansion.

Suc­cess and Growth

The clinic’s patient pop­u­la­tion and staff con­tin­ued expand­ing in the ear­ly 1970s. Two new office build­ings were built to accom­mo­date the many new med­ical spe­cial­ists who were join­ing. New physi­cians saw Glen Ellyn Clin­ic as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice in the com­pa­ny of estab­lished col­leagues. Mean­while, the clin­ic intro­duced a range of spe­cial­ties to the West­ern Sub­urbs, includ­ing tho­racic surgery, neu­ro­surgery, car­diac surgery, gas­troen­terol­o­gy, inva­sive car­di­ol­o­gy and neonatology.

The clin­ic con­tin­ued expand­ing in the 1980s, adding 38,000 square feet of office and lab space to accom­mo­date physi­cians in 16 spe­cial­ties and sub-spe­cial­ties. Clin­ic offices were opened in Bloom­ing­dale and Naperville with a full range of ser­vices. By the end of the decade, the Glen Ellyn Clin­ic was one of the city’s biggest employ­ers – 80 physi­cians and a staff of 480 han­dling 300,000 annu­al patient vis­its. It also owned one of the largest clin­ic oper­at­ed labs in Illi­nois, annu­al­ly per­form­ing more than 100,000 tests onsite and 25,000 more offsite.

Change and Transition

The 1990s saw sig­nif­i­cant changes as sev­er­al found­ing clin­ic part­ners began retir­ing. In addi­tion, advances in med­ical and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy required sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial invest­ment to keep pace with the indus­try. Beyond that, the emer­gence of man­aged care and the result­ing changes in reim­burse­ment meth­ods called for new oper­a­tional strate­gies. In the late 1990s, the clin­ic became part of the country’s largest physi­cian man­age­ment com­pa­ny in an effort to ensure the finan­cial strength it need­ed to con­tin­ue growing.

The new arrange­ment didn’t mean an end to the chal­lenges, how­ev­er. As man­aged care gained ground in the 1990s, physi­cian groups across the coun­try expe­ri­enced increas­ing pres­sures, includ­ing two oth­ers in DuPage Coun­ty that would fig­ure promi­nent­ly in the Glen Ellyn Clinic’s future – Mid-Amer­i­ca Health Part­ners and Wheaton Med­ical Clinic.

Formed in 1964, Wheaton Med­ical Clin­ic includ­ed 25 physi­cians and had recent­ly affil­i­at­ed itself with a major health insur­er. With 50 pri­ma­ry care physi­cians, Mid-Amer­i­ca Health Part­ners had formed in 1995 as a physi­cian-led inde­pen­dent prac­tice group. After Wheaton Med­ical Clin­ic merged with the Glen Ellyn Clin­ic in 1997, Mid-Amer­i­ca joined the fol­low­ing year. Short­ly after, physi­cians from all three began efforts to return the com­bined clin­ic to the pri­vate physi­cian group-prac­tice mod­el under local control.

The result was DuPage Med­ical Group formed in 1999.

DuPage Med­ical Group became the state’s lead­ing mul­ti-spe­cial­ty group prac­tice and has been com­mit­ted to supe­ri­or care and inno­va­tion, with a lead­er­ship struc­ture designed to main­tain bal­ance between pri­ma­ry and spe­cial­ty care. With more than 700 pri­ma­ry care and spe­cial­ty physi­cians in more than 100 loca­tions, DuPage Med­ical Group grew to han­dle upwards of 2 mil­lion patient vis­its annu­al­ly, treat­ing about a third of DuPage County’s population.

Today

DuPage Med­ical Group became Duly Health and Care on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2021.

Our name is a promise to prac­tice health­care the way it was intend­ed. Du” means two in Latin – as in two part­ners: patient and care­giv­er, work­ing togeth­er toward the same goals. And as in two parts of our sto­ry: where we came from – DuPage – and where we’re head­ed – the way health­care should feel.

Duly Health and Care is the largest inde­pen­dent, mul­ti-spe­cial­ty physi­cian-direct­ed med­ical group in the Mid­west with more than 900 pri­ma­ry care and spe­cial­ty care physi­cians and more than 6,000 team mem­bers, in over 150 loca­tions. The orga­ni­za­tion is whol­ly ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing all it serves flour­ish by chal­leng­ing the expect­ed to deliv­er the extra­or­di­nary in health and care.

Duly Health and Care physi­cians and team mem­bers sup­port near­ly 2.5 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als in their per­son­al health jour­neys each year, help­ing each one to meet their extra­or­di­nary poten­tial through a holis­tic care deliv­ery mod­el designed to make health and care wel­com­ing, sim­pli­fied and personalized.

And true to the lega­cy of Dr. McCray and his co-founders, Duly Health and Care remains tire­less in pur­suit of inno­va­tion that chal­lenges the expect­ed to deliv­er the extra­or­di­nary to all we serve.