West Suburban Medical Center’s entire Oak Park campus was closed Thursday by Oak Park building officials as the final functioning elevator in the complex failed.
Firefighters were called to carry dialysis patients down from the hospital’s fifth floor when the elevator stopped operating. Sean Lintow, Sr., the village’s chief building official, said he saw at least three patients being carried down on “special lifts.”
Lintow said the hospital has a total of 28 elevators, none of which are currently functional. He said the village will require that at least two elevators are brought back into use and then pass inspection by Oak Park’s contracted elevator inspection firm.
In the meantime, no member of the public is allowed into the building. Only hospital employees working in building maintenance, engineering or security will be allowed on site.
The nonprofit PCC Wellness, a longtime tenant of the professional building, had been operating three clinics in that building but “is working urgently” to relocate those services, said a source at PCC.
Village officials said they saw no other activity in the building Thursday when they walked the building’s halls.
Manoj Prasad, CEO of Resilience Health the owner of West Sub, shuttered the hospital in late March. He has claimed that he was gradually reopening clinics within the hospital though that has been difficult to confirm.
Prasad had initially said he had a plan to reopen West Sub by June or July depending on his ability to collect millions in unbilled services.
