West Suburban Medical Center closed its doors to all patients on March 27 with its CEO blaming chronic payment collection woes for a financial crisis that led the hospital to furlough its 600-some employees. Since, all patients have been discharged or transferred to a different medical facility.
Meanwhile, the owner of the hospital’s real estate and a minority investor in the hospital said he’s working with Insight Hospital & Medical Center to potentially reopen and operate West Sub. And State Rep. La Shawn Ford, a long-time supporter of the hospital, said there needs to be an investigation of the hospital’s finances.
The hospital’s closing was disclosed in an email to staff on March 25. Obtained by Wednesday Journal and the Austin Weekly News, the email from Manoj Prasad, the CEO of Resilience Health, said the hospital was able to make only one last payroll.
In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said, “Our top priority remains ensuring continuity of care for community residents and patients who have been impacted by the suspension of service. We are actively working with various healthcare providers, community partners, and sister state agencies on a roadmap that will provide local residents with a stable and accessible healthcare option during this transitional period.”
Under state health regulations, the temporary closing of a hospital requires written notification to the state’s Health Facilities and Service Review Board. It also requires the shuttered hospital to provide status updates every 30 days.
If the conversations with a new hospital operator move forward, state regulations require that any new ownership would need a state permit and would have to work through the state licensing process.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford, who recently won the Democratic primary for Congress in the 7th congressional district, previously told reporters: “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 also said a full investigation of West Sub’s finances will be necessary.
Prasad said last Wednesday that the closing was only temporary and that the hospital’s emergency department would close at 4 p.m. that day while all patients within the hospital would be transferred by March 27.
The closure of West Sub includes both its Oak Park campus on Austin Boulevard and its office campus on Lake Street in River Forest. The medical office building on the main campus will remain open, Prasad said.
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 internal email obtained by the Journal and Austin Weekly last week.
“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.”
Prasad said in an email to the Journal and Austin Weekly 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, the Journal and Austin Weekly have 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.