Insight Health Systems, the new owners of West Suburban Medical Center and Weiss Memorial Hospital, will have to pay $5.1 million to its employees at Ohio hospitals over the next three years if a settlement agreement is approved.
The proposed settlement was filed on Sept. 15 and comes after hundreds of employees from Insight Regional Medical Center Trumbull and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Warren, Ohio, were laid off in March 2025. The first payment, if approved, will be made Dec. 31, 2026, and total $1.5 million.
This proposed financial payout coincides with local questions and concerns regarding Insight’s ability to financially support West Suburban and Weiss, which Wednesday Journal previously reported.
Insight also backed away from a lease-to-purchase agreement with a struggling hospital in California in August 2025 “due to the shifting financial landscape,” as written in a statement and reported by Becker’s Hospital Review. The changes to the financial landscape relate to federal healthcare spending cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Insight bought the two struggling Ohio hospitals from Steward Health Care with plans to reopen, but those plans have still been unsuccessful almost two years later.
Insight credits the struggles for reopening to Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy. According to a CBS News investigation and court documents, Steward left hospitals around the country financially reeling after company executives allegedly misappropriated hundreds of millions of funds.
Unable to restore the hospital and jobs since their acquisition in 2024, employees allege in the class action lawsuit they never received vacation pay, their three weeks of wages, and all medical benefits were terminated, according to reporting from local news outlets.
Insight attempted to reopen the emergency room at Insight Regional Medical Center Trumbull last October, but quickly shut down once more, and later agreed to surrender its hospital license in January 2026.
On Nov. 17, 2025, an official at the Ohio Department of Health notified Insight, “that I propose to issue an order revoking Insight Foundation of Trumbull’s license to operate,” citing violations from five different inspections spanning just over seven months.
The letter sent by ODH states the “facility failed to provide diagnostic
services and therapeutic services for medical diagnosis, treatment, and care of injured, disabled or sick people, by or under the supervision of physicians,” in February and March 2025, as it had closed.
When the emergency room reopened, ODH investigated claims regarding their lack of ability to provide health care services once more. The investigation looked into a case of “dispensing intravenous thrombolytics to an emergency room stroke patient.”
“Instead that patient waited for two hours in the emergency room before being transferred to another hospital for proper care, jeopardizing the patient’s ability to receive these medications within the narrow window of time available for their administration,” wrote ODH in the letter.
Multiple inspection reports detail several cases where insufficient staffing impacted patient care during the reopening.
There were other “delayed maintenance, life safety, and water management plan issues,” found in an earlier September inspection which continued through October, November and December.
Two inspection reports in October revealed violations for incomplete water testing and management for “controlling legionella risk or other waterborne pathogens.”
October and November inspections separately cited heating issues on two different days about two weeks apart. Temperatures were found to be about 63 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the building and the facility “failed to provide heat.”
An inspection on Dec. 9, 2025, the last inspection report shared, stated “the facility failed to ensure routine maintenance was provided for the generator, medical gases and fire/smoke doors. This had the potential to affect all patients receiving care in the facility, visitors, and staff.”
The report found 41.8% of fire/smoke doors were non-compliant, and an annual medical gas inspection report had already found air compressors, vacuum pumps, alarms and valves failed. The power also went out at the facility during the survey with issues from two of the three facility generators.
West Suburban Medical Center has notoriously faced similar facility issues and circumstances over the past two years with failing HVAC systems and broken elevators. Insight Health Systems did not respond to inquiries about the Ohio hospital inspections and their plans to rehabilitate West Suburban.