The head of Insight Hospital & Medical Center spoke at a town hall Monday night about how his health system might help to reopen West Suburban Medical Center — even as West Suburban’s former doctors decried the plan and two state lawmakers pulled out of the event entirely.
Community members gathered for the town hall Monday night to hear from former employees, community leaders and the president and CEO of Insight, who spoke about his hopes for the now-shuttered West Suburban and Weiss Memorial hospitals.
One of the current owners of Weiss and West Suburban is now in court asking a judge to enforce a settlement agreement that would sell the hospitals to Insight Health Systems for $1 and require the current CEO to step down.
The town hall, however, took place the same day that a group of West Suburban doctors conducted a vote saying that they have no confidence in Insight’s ability to run West Suburban. And two prominent lawmakers who had planned to speak at the event said hours earlier that they would not attend.
“What began as a discussion about bringing residents and public officials together in the neighborhoods served by West Suburban Hospital has turned into something else entirely,” said Illinois Senate President Don Harmon and Illinois House Assistant Majority Leader Camille Y. Lilly, who had originally been scheduled to speak at the event, in a joint statement Monday. “Organizers planned the event outside the community and, without informing us, added executives from Insight Hospital to the program.”
When asked if the two lawmakers oppose Insight taking over the hospitals, a spokesperson for Harmon said in an email: “It’s too soon to say. We’ve heard concerns from key community members but we haven’t had a chance to hear from the broader community.”
Organizers of the town hall, which was held at Malcolm X College on the city’s West Side, propped up posters on-stage at the event Monday night featuring photos of the two lawmakers with signs saying “NO-SHOW” across their chests.
Meanwhile, also on Monday, a group that includes former West Suburban doctors called the West Suburban Medical Center Medical Executive Committee and Chicago Medical Society Task force voted that they have “no confidence” in Insight as the proposed operator of the hospital.
Insight runs Insight Hospital and Medical Center in the Bronzeville neighborhood, formerly called Mercy Hospital. Insight bought Mercy for $1 in 2021, when Mercy was on the brink of closure.
The group said in its vote that it has “significant concerns regarding Insight Health System’s ability to provide the transparency, accountability, physician collaboration, and community involvement necessary to successfully reopen and sustain West Suburban Medical Center.”
The doctors’ group had previously asked Insight to formally commit to making decisions about the hospital’s clinical operations with “transparency, accountability, and stakeholder involvement,” but the group said that Insight would not make that commitment.
Insight President and CEO Atif Bawahab, who spoke at the event Monday, did not comment on the doctors’ vote Monday evening.
Bawahab, as well as community leaders and former employees, addressed the crowd with Bawahab speaking about Insight’s potential role in reopening West Suburban.
“We want to build an institution that will not just survive but also thrive,” Bawahab said. He said he’d like to see the hospital eventually provide high-end clinical services.
“If we can play any small role in reopening the hospital and revitalizing that area we’d be happy to do so,” Bawahab said.
When asked by an audience member if West Suburban employees would have to reapply for their jobs if Insight took over, he said that while he’s not human resources, “The idea is we want to welcome everyone back to the hospital.”
He said running Insight hospital in Bronzeville has been “an incredible journey over the last five years to rebuild such an historic institution.”
Insight, however, has also faced struggles. Like West Suburban and Weiss, Insight is a safety net hospital, meaning it serves large numbers of people on Medicaid, a state and federally health insurance program for people with low incomes. As of February, Insight owed more than $48 million to the state in loan money and was not in compliance with the terms of its repayment agreement, according to information obtained from the state through a Freedom of Information Act request. A recent WBEZ article further described Insight’s financial struggles.
Whether Insight will be allowed to take over the hospitals may depend, in large part, on what happens in Cook County Circuit Court.
The owners of Weiss and West Suburban have been fighting one another in court for months over the hospitals’ futures. One of the owners is asking a judge to enforce a settlement agreement that would sell the hospitals to Insight and have the hospitals’ current CEO step down as leader of the facilities. The next court date in the case is set for Sept. 11.
Other speakers at the event Monday, which was organized by community groups seeking to reopen the hospital, emphasized the need for care to be restored.
“These are real people’s lives,” said Aaron Saunders, with the Coalition to Save West Suburban. “Everyone sitting to your left and right represents one more person who doesn’t know where they’re going to go in an emergency.”
Tracy White, who was a unit coordinator at West Suburban for more than 20 years and attended the event, said she’s still hoping to one day go back to work at the hospital. Former employees said Monday was coincidentally the day their layoffs from the hospital became official after months of furlough.
White said she’d like to see Insight take over given its success at keeping its Chicago hospital open the past five years, even if it does have some financial challenges.
“They took Mercy and have been successful so I’m hoping they can do the same thing,” White said.
Dorothy Lawless, with Northside Action for Justice, said Weiss saved her daughter’s life, and she’d like to see it reopen but she’s not sure yet who should take over the hospital.
Event organizers also encouraged those in attendance to write letters to Gov. JB Pritzker asking the state to help with efforts to reopen the hospitals and to write letters to the judge overseeing the Cook County Circuit Court case between the owners, advocating for an appointment of a receiver over the hospitals.
Since Resilience Healthcare bought Weiss and West Suburban in 2022, it received more than $24 million in state grants while accumulating debts of roughly $100 million in state loans and unpaid taxes, according to a Tribune investigation published Sunday. The investigation revealed state officials missed red flags as they approved the hospitals’ sale and failed to follow rules as they gave money to the hospitals.
West Suburban closed in March, after the hospital’s CEO said problems with the billing systems left the hospital short on cash. That same hospital CEO, Dr. Manoj Prasad, closed Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown more than a year ago after the federal government said it would cut the hospital off from Medicare funding following a series of issues, including failure of air conditioning units.
