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West Suburban Medical Center is temporarily shutting its doors and furloughing \u201cmany\u201d employees as it struggles to pay staff, according to the Oak Park hospital\u2019s owner, Manoj Prasad. <\/p>\n
Prasad, the CEO of Resilience Healthcare, said in an email Wednesday to the Sun-Times that the hospital\u2019s emergency room, inpatient units and clinics are closing, \u201ceffective immediately.\u201d He blamed the hospital\u2019s new electronic medical record system for the payroll issues. <\/p>\n
\u201cExactly one year ago, West Suburban Medical Center transitioned to a new electronic medical record system that has never functioned correctly,\u201d Prasad wrote in the email. \u201cDespite repairs having been made, the billing and collection system still has serious problems. The result is that West Suburban has managed to keep operating and serving its patients for a full year on a fraction of the revenue it needs to provide the services needed by its community.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not say when the safety net hospital would reopen. <\/p>\n
This comes eight months after Resilience Healthcare shuttered its other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago\u2019s Uptown neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Prasad sent a message to staff announcing the closure Wednesday. The email, obtained by the Sun-Times, said \u201cmany\u201d employees will be furloughed. <\/p>\n
The email explained that the hospital has been surviving on around \u201c10% to 15% of our normal income\u201d for the past year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile you have been focused on healing the sick, several of us have been focused on a different crisis that started exactly one year ago when we transitioned to the new EMR,\u201d Prasad wrote to staff, referring to the electronic medical record system <\/p>\n
He said \u201cat least half\u201d of the hospital\u2019s work is not getting billed and it will take \u201cmonths of focused hard work\u201d to resolve the billing issue. <\/p>\n
In Prasad\u2019s email to the Sun-Times, he said hospital leadership \u201cdeveloped and deployed a labor-intensive manual work-around to bill and collect revenue.\u201d While that strategy has been effective, he said that process will take time to fully catch up on billing. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis remediation plan has been successful in beginning to bring in revenue needed to keep the hospital operational. However, this process will take time to produce the necessary results,\u201d Prasad wrote. \u201cAt the same time, normal operating expenses need to be met, even while prices are climbing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of that, the hospital will \u201ctemporarily cease providing all patient care services through the Emergency Room, the hospital and clinics, effective immediately. Once the revenue needed to fund operations is received, services will be resumed,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
The newspaper Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest was the first to report West Suburban\u2019s closure.<\/p>\n
Resilience Healthcare\u2019s other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital, closed last July after losing Medicare and Medicaid funding<\/a>. Weiss had been plagued with issues<\/a> for many months, including a broken air conditioning system and a dysfunctional emergency room.<\/p>\n