After months of struggles at Weiss Memorial Hospital, the Uptown hospital shut its doors Friday morning.
Starting Saturday, Weiss will lose access to Medicare and Medicaid funding. That has forced the hospital, which gets most of its revenue from the federal insurance programs, to close.
State investigators found a monthslong pattern of Weiss being in and out of compliance with federal regulations due to several issues at the hospital, including with its emergency room, air conditioning system and nursing staff levels.
Dr. Manoj Prasad, who owns the safety-net hospital, told reporters Friday at his other hospital, West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, that he was appealing the decision. But he warned it could take more than a year to complete the appeals process with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Resilience Healthcare CEO Manoj Prasad vows to appeal the closure of Weiss Memorial Hospital, which lost funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Asked if he planned to sell Weiss, Prasad said: “I am a hospital operator. I have no interest in buying or selling properties.”
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Most of the hospital has been closed since Weiss relocated its entire inpatient unit when the hospital’s air conditioning failed. Every unit was shut down except for the emergency room and outpatient clinics. As of Friday morning, the ER was closed and the outpatient clinics remain open.
Prasad said that although he would do all that he could to keep West Suburban open, that hospital could also close without additional funding. He was joined Friday’s news conference by state Reps. La Shawn Ford and Camille Lilly, who called for state funding to keep the Oak Park hospital open.
“We want to make sure that the same fate doesn’t happen to” West Suburban, Prasad said. Several staff members at West Suburban listened in on Friday’s news conference.
Meanwhile, back in Uptown, community members, local lawmakers, hospital staff and patients mourned Weiss’ closure. They rallied on the sidewalk in front of the hospital and held signs that read “That Ain’t Right!” and “Uptown needs Weiss.”
They shared how important Weiss was to the surrounding immigrant community, how it kept their loved ones alive during emergencies and treated their illnesses.
“I’m deeply worried about the news of the closure of the hospital,” said Phong Nguyen, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam about 50 years ago. “I am over 80 years old this year, and not just my generation, but generations following myself still rely on this hospital for critical services.”
He called on government leaders to help save Weiss. The Vietnam War veteran said Weiss has been crucial to his health. Doctors there treated his colon cancer, kidney stones and lung inflammation, he said.
Illinois state Sen. Mike Simmons, whose district includes Uptown, said the fight to save Weiss was personal. He recalled how his partner had a medical emergency and was treated at Weiss.
“We are talking about people in our community who will die if they don’t have access to a safety-net hospital that is accessible, that is affordable, and that is a known quantity in our communities,” Simmons said. “This is unacceptable. We should all be angry. We should be ready to fight.”
A sign on the shuttered emergency department door at Weiss notified patients the nearest ER is at Thorek Memorial Hospital about a mile away.
Prasad blamed the issues plaguing Weiss on the hospital’s previous owners and disgruntled employees who filed complaints to the state. Prasad has owned the two hospitals since 2022. He said the hospital had been losing more than $30 million annually for several years before Resilience Healthcare, Prasad’s company, purchased Weiss and West Suburban.
“My skills are to make sure that we can run efficiently,” Prasad said. “We made it stretch. I can tell you, if you can find me another team in the country who can have worked in those situations and still been standing two and a half years later, I’ll go and become their student and start learning from them.”
Prasad said the hospital was working on getting Weiss back up to code. He said repairs to the air conditioning system are in the works, but it’s an expensive and difficult undertaking. He also said some of the issues flagged to the state were from disgruntled employees, including a nurse who was passed up for a promotion.
When asked if he was considering selling Weiss, Prasad said, “I am a hospital operator. I have no interest in buying or selling properties. My thing is, these places need hospitals. Otherwise I would have backed off. I didn’t need to be here, you know.”
State inspectors found on Nov. 26, 2024, that Weiss failed to restrain patients without a physician’s order and lock supply cabinets and carts in the ER, according to records obtained by the Sun-Times. Weiss also did not have enough nursing staff, investigators found. In response, Weiss said it had implemented policies to address the issues.
But over the next several months, compliance issues persisted, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In June, after the AC failed, the hospital opened a “makeshift” ER in the hospital’s medical office building. State investigators on July 12 found several issues with the ER, including that it lacked medications, oxygen supplies, monitoring equipment and adequate staff.
“One of the firm beliefs I’ve always had in my life is every community needs access to health care,” Prasad said, “and if you take it away, you are not only, I mean, forget the economic impact, forget the employment impact, but you are lowering the health of the community collectively, which makes for sicker people.”
Kaitlin Washburn is a general assignment for the Sun-Times. Kristen Schorsch covers the health of the region for WBEZ.