The owner of West Suburban Medical Center is pledging to reopen the Oak Park hospital this summer after it closed abruptly last week.
However, both a state lawmaker and top doctor expressed doubts that will happen.
There were awkward and tense moments Wednesday as Dr. Manoj Prasad, the Resilience Healthcare CEO and president, took questions from reporters.
“I have got full confidence that one way or the other will be back to provide services,” Prasad said about an hour and a half into the press conference.
On Friday, the hospital shut its doors due to what hospital leaders have called a “financial crisis.” They said 500 employees are now furloughed, while about 50 are still working. Prasad blames a “system malfunction” in which the hospital couldn’t collect payments for 120,000 claims over the last year.
“We discovered that for some strange reason we were not able to capture charges. For example, you come into my emergency room and you then get transferred to my ICU. All those emergency room charges were vanishing. We did not know why,” Prasad said.
Prasad has owned the hospital since 2022, when a federal bankruptcy court approved Pipeline Health System’s sale of West Suburban Hospital and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to Resilience Healthcare and Ramco Healthcare Holdings.
Weiss Memorial Hospital closed last August after losing access to Medicare and Medicaid funding. Weiss is still under an appeal, and Prasad said he has not “abandoned” it.
He said West Suburban Hospital has been in rough shape since before he took over.
“We had stretchers and gurneys that were duct taped,” Prasad said. “How many people do you know who can come into a bankrupt hospital with nothing in the bank and keep it running for three and a half years?”
Dr. Chidinma Osineme, the hospital’s medical staff president, explained how the closure impacts patients.
“Certainly, they can’t come here. They can’t receive their care. They’re looking to transfer their breast cancer screening to another (hospital), but they can’t access their records,” Osineme said. “They can’t continue their care elsewhere as a result of this abrupt change. They cannot continue their cancer treatment as a result of this abruptly change.”
The emergency room serves about 70 to 80 patients each day. The abrupt closure now puts pressure on Loretto and Rush hospitals, according to state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who also spoke at the news conference.
“This hospital has provided urgent and immediate care in the ED for gunshot victims, for overdose victims. And there is a big void,” Ford said.
The hospital has several outstanding debts, including about $50 million owed to the state in back taxes. Ford, who is also a Congressional candidate, said without an infusion of money, he’s not confident the hospital will reopen this summer.
“We’re meeting with leadership in Springfield, with the governor’s office. There’s concern about the current leadership, and I told that to Dr. Prasad. He has the obligation to prove himself to the people in the community and to the state,” Ford said.
Osineme said there are approximately 150 doctors on the medical staff, but there were more than 300 a year ago.
“Many physicians have left as a result of what’s going on here, or what had been going on here,” she said.
“Do you have confidence this place will reopen soon?” a reporter asked her.
After a long pause, Osineme said, “I don’t have the capacity to at this point say that. No.”
During the news conference, Prasad also confirmed Insight Hospital & Medical Center in Chicago has expressed interest in taking over the hospital, but he does not feel that’s the answer. He plans to hold community meetings to hear directly from patients and families impacted by the hospital’s closure.
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