The WJ coverage of the West Suburban Hospital (WSH) mess has seemed to me just a bit odd. Always we see a photo (often the same one) of WSH’s CEO, Manoj Prasad, looking perplexed. If he’s quoted at all, his statements are not worth the reading.
What’s missing in the coverage is the underlying truth of the hospital’s closure: just like Weiss Memorial Hospital and Westlake Hospital, West Suburban was the victim of private equity ownership. Manoj Prasad is an MD. He is also CEO of Resilience Healthcare and executive vice chairman of Que Capital Limited (DIFC). He has an extensive background in international finance, corporate restructuring, and distressed assets. He is what is known as a vulture capitalist.
The Chicago Sun-Times ran an article by Matt Parr on April 24 titled, “Private equity dismantled West Suburban Medical Center and other area hospitals.” In it he notes that “private equity firms were involved in 44% of the largest health-care bankruptcies in 2025.” One of them, Steward Health Care, “reported more than $9 billion in liabilities, including $6.6 billion in long-term lease obligations tied to real estate deals.”
The vulture capital strategy is to acquire a hospital or hospital system using a heavy load of debt, then to cut essential services while charging fees, extracting dividends, and selling assets. The main assets for a hospital are its real estate and its equipment. The hospital real estate is sold off to parties that lease it back to the hospital at rates it cannot sustain; and key equipment is spirited away, requiring the closure of whole medical departments and the loss of staff.
Too often a dank smokescreen is generated by the owners of the facility: billing systems are screwed up, Medicaid payments are “in arrears,” elevators don’t work, diagnostic equipment is “broken,” and the like. The fact of the matter is that the private equity firm has sold off what’s possible to sell off, made a huge profit from the sale of assets, and left the hospital a skeleton.
Don’t be fooled. The loss of West Suburban Hospital was a planned event. I’m sure Dr. Prasad is biding his time so that he can slip out, stage left, no applause for his performance. Meanwhile, let’s not fool ourselves that the vulture capital owners are planning in any way to bring West Suburban back.
Were an autopsy to be performed, the body would prove to be without organs.
Ed McDevitt
River Forest