West Suburban Medical Center will close its patient operations this week as the Oak Park hospital deals with a financial “crisis,” according to a hospital-wide email obtained and verified by Wednesday Journal.
The hospital will halt patient care this week and “furlough many colleagues” as the system doesn’t have the money to cover its payroll, according to an email sent by Resilience Health CEO Manoj Prasad to the health system’s staff Wednesday morning.
Prasad told Wednesday Journal that only the hospital’s emergency department was “temporarily” closing at 4 p.m. Wednesday and that patients within the hospital would be transferred over the next few days. He added that the rest of the hospital’s services will cease this week and return once the hospital’s billing system starts working.
The impending closure of West Sub includes both its Oak Park campus on Austin Boulevard and its office campus on Lake Street in River Forest.
West Sub’s Electronic Medical Record system has failed to keep up with patient billing over the last year, resulting in “at least half” of the hospital’s work not getting billed, according to the email. Prasad told the Journal that, once the billing system is corrected and the hospital is able to collect its money, West Suburban will operate normally and patient care services will be reinstated.
“While you have been focused on healing the sick, several of us have been focused on a different crisis that started exactly one year ago when we transitioned to the new EMR,” Prasad wrote to staff. “The EMR vendor’s team with numerous consultants and experts could not understand what the problem was and how to fix it. As a result, for the past year, our hospital has survived on around 10% to 15% of our normal income. To put things in perspective, imagine if your family’s monthly income fell by 90% for a full year: that is how we’ve been feeling.”
“So, to avoid any possibility of running out of payroll funds in the future, we are going to suspend all patient care operations this week till our billing situation is resolved and furlough many of our colleagues. The current payroll will be paid on time as we’vealways done.”
Prasad said in an email to the Journal that for 11 months, he knew the system wasn’t accurately billing for the hospital’s work. When asked what could have been done differently to prevent this situation, Prasad said “I do not want to finger point.”
In his email to staff, Prasad said that hospital leadership was employing “two strategies” to catch up on the uncontrolled billing, but that the process would likely take months.
“It is a manual and tedious process, but it is starting to show results,” he wrote. “However, it will take months of focused hard work to get there. In the meanwhile, we have been trying to obtain grants or advances to keep paying our hefty payroll costs till we again become self-sufficient but have not been successful.”
Over the last year, Wednesday Journal has reported on a variety of financial and other issues at the safety net hospital and its parent company, including reportedly millions in unpaid taxes, failed safety inspections, the loss of its residency program’s accreditation and the closure of West Sub’s sister hospital Weiss Memorial.
La Shawn Ford, state representative of the 8th district and Democratic candidate for the 7th congressional district race, told the Journal that “Today’s closure of patient care services at West Suburban is a devastating blow to our community, which is already underserved in healthcare facilities. We cannot afford to lose vital services when so many depend on them.”
Ford said he and other electeds have worked to engage local partners and advocated for more support for West Suburban at a state level.
“It is critical that the state steps in to bolster Loretto Hospital to handle the increased demand and protect the health and wellbeing of our community,” Ford added. “The impact of this closure could mean the difference between life and death for those in need of immediate care.”
This is a developing story.