West Suburban Medical Center closing temporarily as it runs out of cash to pay employees
West Suburban Medical Center is temporarily shutting its doors and furloughing "many" employees as it struggles to pay staff, according to the Oak Park hospital's owner, Manoj Prasad.
Prasad, the CEO of Resilience Healthcare, said in an email Wednesday to the Sun-Times that the hospital's emergency room, inpatient units and clinics are closing, "effective immediately." He blamed the hospital's year-old new electronic medical record system “that has never functioned correctly” for the payroll issues.
He did not say when the safety net hospital, which has 234 beds, would reopen.
"Despite repairs having been made, the billing and collection system still has serious problems," Prasad wrote in the email. "The result is that West Suburban has managed to keep operating and serving its patients for a full year on a fraction of the revenue it needs to provide the services needed by its community."
This comes seven months after Resilience Healthcare shuttered its other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. Like Weiss, West Suburban serves a high percentage of patients who rely on Medicaid health insurance for people with low incomes or Medicare for seniors, according to the most recent state data.
Prasad sent a message to staff announcing the closure Wednesday. The email, obtained by the Sun-Times, said "many" employees will be furloughed.
The email explained that the hospital has been surviving on around "10% to 15% of our normal income" for the past year.
“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, referring to the electronic medical record system
He said “at least half” of the hospital’s work is not getting billed and it will take "months of focused hard work" to resolve the billing issue.
In Prasad's email to the Sun-Times, he said hospital leadership "developed and deployed a labor-intensive manual work-around to bill and collect revenue." While that strategy has been effective, he said that process will take time to fully catch up on billing.
"At the same time, normal operating expenses need to be met, even while prices are climbing," Prasad wrote.
Because of that, the hospital will "temporarily cease providing all patient care services through the Emergency Room, the hospital and clinics, effective immediately. Once the revenue needed to fund operations is received, services will be resumed," he wrote.
The newspaper Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest was the first to report West Suburban's closure.
Resilience Healthcare's other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital, closed last August after losing Medicare and Medicaid funding. Weiss had been plagued with issues for many months, including a broken air conditioning system and a dysfunctional emergency room.
At the time, Prasad warned in a news conference that West Suburban could meet a similar fate.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Contributing: Kristen Schorsch
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