O’Hare clinic director retires

 John Zautcke with UIC Clinic radiographers Rose Ferri and Saman Idri.

John Zautcke, director of the O’Hare airport clinic for 20 years, retired Dec. 30. Zautcke, also an associate professor of emergency medicine in the UIC College of Medicine, led the clinic since it opened in 1995.

The O’Hare clinic, located in Terminal 2, is one of just a handful of airport clinics in the United States that serve both employees of the airport as well as travelers. It is affiliated with the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Science System.

“What makes us different from a traditional urgent care clinic is that we see a lot of injured workers, often from lifting and throwing luggage, so lots of back and shoulder problems,” Zautcke said.

The clinic has seen a number of stroke and heart attack patients, but perhaps most notable were two patients with collapsed lungs.

“They were supposed to get onto connecting flights, but there’s a good chance they would have died if they got on those flights with their lungs still collapsed,” Zautcke said.

The clinic is now directed by another UIC emergency medicine clinician,
Joseph Colla.

In addition to its medical director, the clinic employs three other doctors, two advanced practicing nurses and four radiology technicians/medical assistants.