Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago closes emergency department
The announcement comes as Weiss is set to lose access to Medicare and Medicaid this weekend.
CEO Dr. Manoj Prasad confirmed that only outpatient services will continue, but surgeries and the emergency department have been shut down.
He defended his management of this hospital, as many community members and leaders are blaming him for the closure.
"So they finally, very kindly agreed to say, Okay, put your license on board that emergency department was hardly seeing any patients now, because there was no, no way to admit them and take care of them," he said. So they asked for a date, and we said, okay, let's close it down today, and it has been closed down, and they are holding the hospital license in hold. There is some technical term for it, till such time that we reapply or we file the appeal for CMS reconsideration, or do a new application, and then that will come back on."
Dr. Manoj Prasad said the closure was connected to some issues discovered by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid surveyors having to do with recent complaints at the hospital.
There have been reports of mistreatment and unclean facilities. The Illinois Department of Public Health has investigated those claims at least seven times.
He recognized that it is, of course, a huge blow to the roughly 700 employees here and the large community of patients they serve.
He said they plan to appeal the hold on their hospital license, but that process will likely take eight to 12 months.
Dr. Prasad spoke from Oak Park, where he cautioned that another Resilience Healthcare facility, West Suburban Medical Center, could soon face the same fate as Weiss.
Meanwhile, in Uptown, patients, employees, and community leaders rallied in front of the vacant emergency department—calling for help from the federal government.
"It is criminal to not provide a healthy working environment for healthcare workers, so that they can do their jobs to do no harm so that they can take care of the people who are most vulnerable," Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th Ward) said.
ER tech at Weiss Hospital, Alaa Alkhati, echoes the shame emotion and said he will have to look for a new job.
"It's a shame to be closing down a hospital that has so many amazing people working in it," he said. "I'm going to have to look for a new job, like many of us are, but there are only so many of these jobs near here."
The group that rallied here is asking for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to grant an eight-week extension for this Emergency Department to stay open. There is no word from CMS on whether that could happen.
The video above is from an earlier report.
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