A Cook County judge has decided to appoint a receiver to take control of two safety-net hospitals whose fate has been tied up in court hearings for months.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Stanton said at a hearing Friday that it was time for someone to take control of West Suburban Medical Center and Weiss Memorial Hospital as the hospitals’ owner, Resilience Healthcare CEO Manoj Prasad, and landlord, Rathnakar Reddy Patlola, continue their court battle over a settlement agreement.
“Someone needs to take control of this, and it should no longer be the current parties,” said Stanton.
Stanton’s decision was a win for Patlola, who had asked the judge months ago to appoint a receiver to oversee the hospitals. He denied the request at the time, but several problems have since emerged that he said now make a receiver necessary.
A factor in the judge’s decision was Weiss Memorial Hospital losing its Illinois hospital license this week. The Illinois Department of Public Health terminated the hospital’s provisional license Wednesday after Resilience Healthcare failed to demonstrate that substantial improvements had been made to the hospital since it shut its doors last year.
“Despite having over a year to make improvements at Weiss Memorial, hospital leadership has not demonstrated the necessary improvements to safely re-open the hospital to care for the community’s residents,” the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement.
The judge said he did not want to see the same happen to West Suburban Hospital.
Aaron Saunders, of the Coalition to Save Safety Net Hospitals, speaks during a news conference in Daley Plaza to call on the state to take Resilience’s Chicago-area hospitals out of the hands of its current owner and place the hospitals into receivership by a medical provider on Friday.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Prasad could not immediately be reached for comment. A representative for Patlola didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.
Weiss Memorial Hospital was issued a provisional license in August 2025 after the hospital closed. Provisional licenses can be issued to hospitals that are not in compliance with state laws governing hospitals. In August, public health officials gave Resilience Healthcare a 30-day extension, but said no progress had been made.
Stanton will appoint a receiver at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday. But that does not mean the hospitals will reopen. Instead, the judge said the receiver’s role will be to “secure the assets” of the hospitals. Since the legal battle began, the hospital owners have moved equipment out of both hospitals but have not given the judge a reason for doing so.
Meanwhile, advocates said the judge’s decision was the “right first step” toward potentially reopening the hospitals and restoring access to care for community members who have been without it since both hospitals closed.
“Every day there are people fighting for their lives, and this has become a money dispute,” said Aaron Saunders of the Coalition to Save Safety Net Hospitals.
Saunders said while both the hospitals’ owner and landlord have failed to reach an agreement, residents in the city’s North and West sides have been left without access to healthcare.
Resilience Healthcare abruptly closed West Suburban Hospital in late March and furloughed most of its employees, blaming the hospital’s electronic medical record system, which the company said “never functioned correctly,” for payroll problems — an issue that owners still have not resolved. Hospital inspection reports obtained by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times also showed the hospital struggling to take care of its most critically ill patients and even keep the heat on in the months before it closed.
The owners also shut down Weiss Memorial Hospital last summer after the Uptown hospital was stripped of Medicare and Medicaid funding.