West Suburban Medical Center and Weiss Memorial Hospital are expected to be sold to Insight Health Systems, bringing a monthslong, bitter legal fight over the safety-net hospitals to an end.
The hospitals’ landlord, Rathnakar Reddy Patlola, made a late-night deal Wednesday to buy Resilience Healthcare CEO Manoj Prasad’s stake in the hospitals. Insight will then buy the hospitals from Patlola.
Prasad did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Patlola celebrated the “formal and finalized settlement” and said he expects it will lead to the “completed sale” of the hospitals to Insight. He “looks forward” to the two hospitals reopening.
Atif Bawahab, an executive at Insight Health Systems and CEO of Insight Hospital in Chicago, said in a statement the company would assess both hospitals to “determine the appropriate path forward.” He also emphasized that the agreement was the start of a “long, phased process.”
“There are real hurdles ahead — restoring licenses and certifications, rebuilding systems and staffing, meeting regulatory requirements, and earning back the confidence of patients and providers — and none of that happens overnight,” Bawahab said.
No specific dollar amounts for either sale were immediately made public. It was also not clear how — or if — the deal would reopen either hospital.
An eleventh-hour deal
Last Friday, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Stanton decided to put a receiver in charge of the hospitals after presiding over months of bickering in his courtroom between the lawyers representing the business partners-turned-foes.
The legal battle centered around Prasad’s decision to shut down West Suburban Medical Center in March. Patlola then sued him for control of the Oak Park hospital and Uptown’s Weiss Memorial Hospital, which closed in August 2025 and recently lost its state hospital license.
Stanton originally said a receiver would be announced Tuesday. Instead, Stanton and lawyers met behind closed doors Tuesday and Wednesday, while advocates and reporters waited for hours in his courtroom.
Few details about the late-night deal were shared when Stanton and the lawyers returned to the courtroom at around 10:30 p.m., said Rev. Robin Hood, a West Side advocate who waited for hours on the 25th floor of the Daley Center Wednesday night.
“Was this strenuous? Yeah. Was we tired? Yes. But guess what? When you fighting a good fight to help save people’s lives, you just keep fighting it,” Hood told reporters Thursday at Greater Rock Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield Park.
From Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday night, Hood and Ieloit Jackson, another West Side advocate for reopening the hospital, waited 11 and a half hours in Stanton’s courtroom. At one point, he said, the lights were turned off.
“It was so disturbing that [Stanton] said that this is a private matter, so that’s why they’ve been in chambers so long. But it’s a public issue,” Jackson said. “It’s the public that’s affected.”
Despite the delay, Jackson and Hood celebrated the result and called it a “small victory.”
Dawn Anderson, who worked in West Suburban’s medical record department for 32 years until she was laid off in May, said she was thankful Prasad was out.
“I’m praying for a change. I’m praying for transparency,” Anderson said. “There was so much taken away from not only patients but the employees. … This was a traumatic experience for everyone.”
A long road for Insight
Rev. Henry Barlow, an Insight board member and the pastor of the Morning Star Baptist Church, said at Thursday’s news conference he hopes the hospitals can be reopened “as soon as possible.” But he said it’s a long road ahead. He estimated it will take at least four months to get West Suburban back open. Weiss will take even longer he said, without saying a time frame.
“This was the easy part. The hard part is about to start,” Barlow said.
But not everyone from the hospital has faith in Insight. Vishnu Chundi, an infectious disease doctor who spent more than 15 years at West Suburban, said he didn’t trust the for-profit company.
“We’ve been through so many owners,” Chundi said. “It’s just we have fatigue. … Unless they give concrete steps and they’re willing to sign on and talk to the physicians and the people that provide service, how many times are you going to get slapped in the face over and over again until you understand the game that it’s basically been asset stripping and taking things away from the community?”
Patlola’s legal team had been pushing for months to enforce a settlement agreement that includes selling the hospitals for $1 to Insight Health Systems. Prasad, who would have to step down as CEO and take on a temporary consulting position, had resisted that deal.
Insight runs Insight Hospital and Medical Center, formerly Mercy Hospital. The company bought the Bronzeville hospital for $1 in 2021, preventing it from closing.
But Insight appears to have its own financial troubles, raising questions about how it can afford to take on two more hospitals. Insight Hospital has consistently lost money since buying Mercy. In 2024, the hospital lost nearly $30 million, the most recent records show.
Insight Hospital has received about $50 million in advances from the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to help keep the doors open since it bought Mercy. Last month, a HFS spokesperson said Insight had paid back just over $1 million so far, and that the department “has no plans to provide additional support at this time.”
Insight, West Suburban and Weiss are all safety-net hospitals, which are often the fabric of low-income and immigrant communities. They typically don’t make much money and struggle to make ends meet.