At a recent village board retreat, Village Manager Kevin Jackson responded to a question from an Oak Park trustee about the “crisis” at West Suburban Medical Center.
Jackson said the village has a role to play in managing the impact of the issues at the safety net hospital, which is situated in Oak Park near the village’s border with Chicago. Wednesday Journal has recently reported about a variety of issues at the hospital including the abrupt dismissal of family birthplace nursing staff, unsafe temperatures inside hospital buildings during a recent heat wave and accreditation issues causing a loss of the hospital’s resident doctor program among other challenges facing the institution.
The discussion followed a question from Trustee Jenna Leving Jacobson while the board talked about what health and safety goals it would set in its plan for 2026. She said she had been hearing from concerned residents who wanted to know what the village was doing to address the “increasing crisis” at the hospital.
“Managing the impact on the community is clearly a health and safety situation,” Leving Jacobson said. “It’s not going well over there and our community is noticing. They’re coming to us to figure something out, if we can.”
Jackson said that the board can expect to hear more about what the village is doing to play a role in supporting the institution to get back on track.
“I can’t unpack that completely tonight, but President Scaman and I are dialed in and we’re thinking about the larger picture, and we will be communicating more,” he said. “We’ve been very engaged on the hospital issue on a variety of fronts. There’s the health and safety of the clientele there, there’s actually how they perform as a neighbor in our community.”
Making sure that both the hospitals in Oak Park are functioning is also key to the village’s economic vitality plan, he said.
“The hospitals are a focal point in our economic vitality strategic plan,” he said. “We need to really be strategically focused on protecting them, but also opportunities to expand. They support a large workforce and support other industries.”
Jackson also said that part of monitoring the situation includes preparing for the worst.
“On the West Suburban side of that equation, we want to make sure that we’re doing all we can,” Jackson said. “We also want to look at it from a standpoint of ‘if the worst thing happens.’ We’re thinking about that.”
With the uncertain future of the hospital, a West Side-based committee was formed to open up communications between the Austin and Oak Park communities and the owners of the hospital, and to hold those owners, Resilience Healthcare, accountable to its neighbors.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford helped organize the nascent group, which so far has met once and consists of four West Sub representatives and two community members.
The village did not have an update to provide last week on if any representatives of village leadership will be included in those meetings going forward.