SHILOH – Heartland Women’s Healthcare of Advantia aims to provide healthcare for all women’s needs, from urology to gynecology and AI-assisted mammograms.
Dr. Michael Schifano, an ob/gyn and physician manager with Heartland Women’s Healthcare, explained that the practice can cover a variety of concerns. As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, he highlighted the importance of regular breast exams and shared information about new technology that is catching more cancers than ever before.
“We are basically the one-stop shop for women’s healthcare,” Schifano said. “We literally cover everything, from adolescent girls who are experiencing issues with their first periods all the way to post-menopause and treatment with hormone replacement.”
Heartland Women’s Healthcare has several practices across the southern Illinois region, including in Shiloh and Marion. Telemedicine is another important aspect of their work, as they regularly welcome people who are traveling from 50 miles away to access care. Schifano recognizes that Heartland Women’s Healthcare is located in “a healthcare desert.”
In addition to their ob/gyn offerings, they recently added a nurse practitioner who specializes in psychiatric mental health. They also have an urgent care practice that can address issues that most urgent care facilities will not.
“We have the region’s first female-only urgent care,” Schifano said. “Anyone who’s had nausea in early pregnancy or had any issues like spotting in pregnancy or even something as mundane as a UTI or discharge realizes that when they go to a regular urgent care, a lot of them, they kind of shy away from it. Basically, they wind up getting sent back to their gynecologist. We wanted to kind of embrace that and utilize that area or that flagship practice to basically take care of all women’s needs.”
As part of their practice, Heartland Women’s Healthcare is also embracing new technology that has the potential to save lives. Artificial intelligence can scan mammograms for densities and differentiations that the human eye might miss.
Schifano noted that this technology can identify a three-millimeter lesion, while radiologists might detect a three-centimeter lesion. Not only does this give people a better chance of catching cancers before they have metastasized, but it might save lives.
“That’s something the size of a pinhead versus the side of a grape,” Schifano explained. “The chances that the early one is metastasized already is very, very low, and the treatment is a lumpectomy with radiation versus chemotherapy and all the rest. Once it metastasizes or goes to the lymph nodes, it’s massively different to the patient. So the patient’s experience is vastly different when it’s picked up early, and the survival rate that obviously goes along with that is vastly different.”
As more healthcare practices begin utilizing AI for mammograms, Schifano believes insurance companies will begin covering these additional scans. He encourages people to visit the official Heartland Women’s Healthcare website for more information. He also urges community members to schedule regular breast exams and mammograms to increase your chances of detecting breast cancer early.
“To be able to utilize that technology to catch all these answers much earlier and much more thoroughly — it’s just exciting times in medicine,” he added.
