The closure of the West Suburban Family Medicine Residency Program (WSFMRP) is a devastating loss for our community. Graduates of this established and respected program are clinicians, researchers, teachers, and leaders, not only in Chicagoland, but across the country and internationally. WSFMRP residents and faculty provide critical health-care access on Chicago’s West Side and near west suburbs, especially for those with limited options for care.
The closure comes after working conditions at West Suburban Medical Center deteriorated so severely that the program’s own faculty requested an evaluation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to determine whether resources were adequate to provide quality training for future physicians. The agency determined that conditions did not meet the minimum standards for a family medicine training program, which amplified the quality-of-care alarms that WSFMRP family physicians have been sounding for the past two years.
Attempts by residents and faculty to attain needed resources from West Suburban Hospital owner and CEO Manoj Prasad were not just ignored, but met with hostile actions that directly impacted the ACGME’s decision. This includes withholding federal money allocated to the hospital specifically to support the residency program. The residents’ unionization to elevate patient-care concerns, the deteriorating condition of the physical plant and a lack of medical supplies, and the revoking of obstetrical privileges for family physicians and midwives have been documented in Wednesday Journal and elsewhere.
I am a proud graduate of the WSFMRP. I chose family medicine because I wanted to provide holistic, high-quality medical care for people at all stages of life. I chose the WSFMRP because it afforded me the opportunity to be trained by some of the most intelligent, dedicated, compassionate physicians I have ever met, and to be part of a program that cares for all members of the community, especially the most vulnerable. I am deeply grateful to the doctors, nurses, and patients who formed me; fiercely proud of the WSFMRP residents and faculty who have been speaking up against injustice; and profoundly saddened at this loss for our community and for the future of health care.
Anne Jacobson MD, MPH
Oak Park