After abruptly shuttering last month, West Suburban Medical Center announced Wednesday morning that it is taking a step toward reopening by resuming some outpatient services.
The hospital is gradually reopening its clinic starting Wednesday, according to a statement released by the hospital. Patients are being contacted to schedule appointments, the statement said. The clinic will initially offer primary care visits, then some specialty visits and then testing, according to the statement.
Some staff who were furloughed when the hospital closed will return to support the clinic, according to the statement. The statement did not say how many would return.
The hospital’s emergency department and inpatient units remained closed Wednesday.
“Getting the clinic back open and getting patients scheduled is our first priority,” said hospital owner Dr. Manoj Prasad in a statement. “We are slowly bringing staff back and rebuilding operations step by step.”
The unexpected news comes less than a month after Prasad closed the hospital, citing problems with a billing system that he said led to the hospital not being able to collect many payments for about a year. According to the statement released Wednesday morning, the resumption of services is being funded by dollars “recovered through the hospital’s initial billing remediation process.”
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During a news conference earlier this month, Prasad had initially said he hoped to reopen the hospital this summer.
Following news of the clinic’s reopening, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday: “For the sake of the patients and the community, I hope this is true and that it pans out. But my hopefulness is tempered by the cascade of financial and logistical problems that preceded the recent closure. Like so many others who have tried to help along the way, I still have a lot of questions about where all the resources went.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Vishnu Chundi, a longtime infectious disease doctor at West Suburban, said Wednesday he was “beyond skeptical” that the hospital would fully reopen, noting that the hospital still owes a significant amount of money to the state and vendors. West Suburban owes more than $50 million in taxes to Illinois, according to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
“There’s no confidence from the medical staff that the hospital can be safely opened under the same leadership,” said Chundi, who is also co-chair of the Chicago Medical Society West Suburban Hospital Task Force to Reopen and Restore Care.
On Monday, the Chicago Medical Society and the medical staff at West Suburban sent a letter to Gov. JB Pritzker asking the governor to intervene. In the letter, they called upon Pritzker to use his executive authority to reopen the hospital, direct emergency funding to the hospital to stabilize operations and appoint an interim management team.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office, however, said in a statement Tuesday evening, “It is outside of the Governor’s authority to intervene in the matters of a private business, including those of a privately-owned medical facility.
“Despite intensive financial and operational support from the State of Illinois throughout Resilience Health’s tenure, West Suburban is ultimately a private facility whose leadership was both unable and unwilling to do everything in its power necessary to keep the facility in operation — and they never presented the State with any formal request or viable plan to continue operations,” the governor’s office said in the statement.
The news of some services resuming Wednesday morning also follows pressure from Prasad’s landlord. On April 9, Prasad’s business partner and landlord Reddy Rathnaker Patlola issued eviction notices to Prasad’s company Resilience Healthcare, telling Resilience it had five days to pay more than $24 million in rent or vacate the hospital facility. Prasad’s Resilience filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court on Tuesday against Patlola’s company over the eviction notices. Patlola is also a minority owner of Resilience.
A spokesperson for Patlola said in a statement Wednesday of the clinic reopening, “Dr. Prasad continues to mislead the community by creating the illusion of his ability to reopen West Suburban.”