Concerns swirl about potential closure of Weiss hospital, which will lose Medicare funding this weekend

Chicago Tribune

3 days ago

With just days to go before Weiss Memorial Hospital was scheduled to lose Medicare funding, concerns swirled Thursday about whether the hospital was about to close.
Dr. Manoj Prasad, the head of the company that owns the hospital, and other hospital officials did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. But three hospital staffers, who asked to remain unnamed, told the Tribune that they'd been told the hospital would close at 7 a.m. Friday.
The Uptown hospital's hallways were mostly empty Thursday morning. The emergency waiting room was deserted, and some of the offices and waiting rooms had signs reading 'permanently closed.' A white folding table at the entrance of Weiss held four flyers with instructions for patients about how to get medical records, ask billing questions and find their doctors at other locations.
A man wearing scrubs walked through a hospital entrance Thursday morning carrying cardboard boxes.
'It's devastating,' said Marianne Lalonde, an Uptown resident and past president of the Lakeside Area Neighbors Association, of the possible closure. 'It serves a population that is really in need. I think people are really going to struggle to find care and especially more vulnerable populations are going to struggle.'
Worries about closure follow news last month that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services planned to terminate Weiss from the Medicare program Aug. 9, which is this Saturday. The federal agency issued a public notice, at the time, saying that the Uptown hospital would lose its ability to participate in Medicare because it was out of compliance with rules related to nursing services, physical environment and emergency services.
The notice did not elaborate on specific problems, but it came after the Illinois Department of Public Health conducted an on-site investigation at the hospital in June in response to complaints of high temperatures after air conditioning equipment at the facility failed, according to a state health department memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The state health department found temperatures as high as nearly 89 degrees in the hospital's intensive care unit and nearly 87 degrees in the emergency department, according to the memo. At the time, the hospital moved all of its inpatients to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and other hospitals because of the heat, according to a previous news release from the hospital.
The air conditioning was supposed to be fixed by the end of June, according to the state memo. The air conditioning appeared to be working again Thursday, at least in parts of the hospital.
The state health department said in a statement Thursday that no patients were currently housed at Weiss. The department said it was continuing 'to monitor developments around the status of Weiss Memorial Hospital.'
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services confirmed Thursday that if the hospital loses Medicare funding, it will also lose Medicaid dollars, under federal regulations and state law.
It would be difficult for any hospital to keep its doors open without Medicare and Medicaid funding, and especially so for Weiss. In 2023 about 88% of Weiss' inpatients and nearly 67% of its outpatients were on Medicare or Medicaid, according to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
This week, a number of local elected officials and community organizations wrote a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services asking for an eight-week extension and a reevaluation of conditions at Weiss before the hospital's Medicare participation is terminated to give the hospital more time to become compliant with the agency's standards.
'Our communities stand to lose not only a critical healthcare provider, but also a key employer and stabilizing force in the Uptown neighborhood,' they wrote in the letter. Signers included Ald. Angela Clay, 46th; Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago; Rep. Hoan Huynh, D-Chicago; and Sen. Mike Simmons, D-Chicago, among many others.
The elected officials said in the letter that they've convened emergency meetings with leaders at Weiss, the state and city health departments and officials from the mayor's office, among others, to help find solutions.
'It's been a critical safety net hospital for working families and seniors and communities of color, immigrants and refugees, and so we want to make sure that this hospital is here to stay,' Huynh told the Tribune.
Ruth Castillo, with the Lakeside Area Neighbors Association, said that if the hospital closed, it would be 'heartbreaking.'
'It's such an important resource for the community,' she said. 'There are so many neighbors that are on Medicare and Medicaid. They won't have a resource (that's) walking distance or a short bus ride away.'
She said, however, she thought years ago that something like this might happen. The hospital has gone through a series of ownership changes in recent years. A previous owner, California-based Pipeline Health, agreed several years ago to sell a Weiss parking lot to a developer, angering community members who worried, in part, that it was the beginning of the end for Weiss.
'A hospital that has a future plan is not going to sell the last bit of land that it has to develop,' Castillo said.
Pipeline later sold Weiss and West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park to a new company called Resilience Healthcare led by Prasad, who touted, at the time, his ability to turn around struggling hospitals.
'Over the past 30 years I've had the privilege of leading numerous health care organizations and have rescued a number of challenged facilities,' Prasad told the Health Facilities and Services Review Board in 2022 as he sought to buy Weiss and West Suburban.
WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times first reported news of the hospital's potential closure.