CHICAGO (WLS) — A town hall on Chicago’s Near West Side brought fresh urgency to demands that two closed hospitals be brought back online, even as their fate remains entangled in a continuing court battle.
The gathering at Malcolm X College drew advocates, former hospital workers, patients and neighborhood residents, all calling for the reopening of West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown.
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Speakers said the hospital closures have left patients with fewer options and placed added strain on nearby health care providers already working to meet demand.
“Nobody is saying anything about the patients. Nobody cares where the patients are going. They think, oh we haven’t heard anything, that the patients have all been reallocated,” said Sylvia Williams, who worked at West Suburban Medical Center for 20 years.
Willie Williams, also a longtime former West Suburban employee, said hospitals in surrounding communities are now struggling to take in patients who once relied on the closed facilities.
“A lot of the surrounding hospitals, they don’t have the nurses,” Williams said. “They don’t have enough people in the emergency rooms to take care of the overflow of the people that are coming in.”
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The town hall comes five months after West Suburban Medical Center stopped serving patients because of what was described as a massive revenue shortfall. It also comes more than a year after Weiss Memorial Hospital closed after losing Medicare funding.
The hospitals are owned by Resilience Health. The company’s CEO has been involved in a court battle with the owner of the hospital properties over a settlement agreement that could allow the facilities to be sold to Insight Health Systems, which previously took over Mercy Hospital.
The closures drew criticism from some community advocates.
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“They wanted to do it for what? To make money, so eventually, it’s going to fail. So, this was a recipe for disaster from day one,” said Rev. Robin Hood of the Coalition to Save Safety Net Hospitals.
Atif Bawahab, president and CEO of Insight Chicago, said the company’s goal would be to do more than simply reopen the hospitals if a sale is completed.
“The basic is not just to get the doors open, but how can this be an institution that can provide high end clinical services,” Bawahab said.
He added that former employees would play a critical role in any reopening effort.
“We will need to rely on previous staff. Us walking in, we’re not going to know anything. We’re not going to know the medical records, where supplies are,” Bawahab said.
Resilience Health owes taxpayers more than $100 million. Town hall organizers said they are seeking stricter oversight and greater transparency at the state level as the legal proceedings continue.
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