West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Ill., has temporarily paused all patient care services in its emergency room, hospital and clinics, effective immediately.
Services will resume once the revenue needed to fund operations is received, a hospital spokesperson said in a March 26 statement shared with Becker’s.
The hospital transitioned to a new EMR system one year ago; it has never functioned correctly, the spokesperson said. Despite repairs, serious problems remain with the billing and collection system, causing the hospital to maintain operations and patient care for a year “on a fraction of the revenue it needs” to serve its community, the spokesperson said.
Hospital leadership recently deployed a labor-intensive manual work-around to bill and collect revenue.
“This remediation plan has been successful in beginning to bring in revenue needed to keep the hospital operational,” the spokesperson said. “However, this process will take time to produce the necessary results. At the same time, normal operating expenses need to be met, even while prices are climbing.”
As of the afternoon of March 25, the emergency room was no longer accepting ambulances, and walk-ins ended after 4 p.m., the village of Oak Park said in a March 25 statement. The hospital is also working with about 70 patients to assess whether they can be discharged or transported to other facilities by 5 p.m. March 27, the statement said.
In addition to temporarily closing, the hospital is also furloughing “many” employees, Manoj Prasad, MD, PhD, CEO of Chicago-based Resilience Healthcare, which owns the hospital, told the Chicago Sun-Times on March 25.
The temporary closure at the 234-bed safety-net hospital follows the closure of its sister hospital, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago. It closed Aug. 8 amid CMS’ plan to terminate its Medicare program participation. Shortly after, Dr. Prasad said he was unsure of the future of both hospitals and could not make assurances about employment status for hospital staff.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:04 p.m. Central time on March 26.
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