West Suburban Medical Center resumes some services, but Rep. LaShawn Ford advises staying away

It has been several weeks since West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois, abruptly shut down — and then on Wednesday, it just as swiftly partially reopened, with some services available.

But Illinois state Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) advised not going to the hospital for now, and argued that there are no assurances that the hospital is safe.

The resumption of hospital-based clinic and testing services will be done gradually, and is the first step in the hospital's reopening plan, officials said. Patients will be contacted by phone and email to schedule appointments.

Hospital officials said the clinic will offer primary care at first, then some specialist visits. It will also offer testing services. All services are outpatient only.

This is being funded by money recovered from the hospital's initial billing remediation process. Officials said a team of more than 100 people continue to work through more than 120,000 outstanding claims.

Speaking to CBS News Chicago on Thursday morning, Rep. Ford called the reopening "whimsical," and said it seemed to have been executed without a real plan in place.

"I don't think anyone was notified that this whimsical act was going to take place," Ford said. "I think that this doctor reopened the hospital without a clear path and a plan for operational safety; no assurance to the community that he had a plan to bring people in, and that they were going to be safe in the care of the hospital."

West Suburban blamed its abrupt shutdown on a computerized billing system, and has said it will reopen once it has the revenue needed to fund operations.  

Dr. Manoj Prasad — chief executive officer of Resilience Healthcare, the company that owns the hospital — has a plan to reopen the hospital by summer, but doctors who work at West Suburban doubted he could deliver on his promise.

Prasad said a billing failure meant the hospital was only collecting a fraction of the money it should have been paid. He also said he inherited major problems when he bought West Suburban in 2022.

"We had stretchers and gurneys that were duct-taped," Prasad said earlier this month. "All of the emergency room charges were vanishing. We did not know why."

Prasad has also argued he deserves credit for running a hospital no one else wanted.

But Ford has been complaining from the beginning that Prasad lacks a plan for the hospital.

"At this point, I think the community is coming out, and we're going to be very strong against his operations of the hospital. I mean, he can't have a plan, and we don't trust his plan, and our goal is to have a community-led effort to have a full operation at that hospital when it reopens fully," said Ford.

There are also questions about how the hospital can reopen in any capacity when an eviction notice has been posted on the door, and when the hospital owes, at last check, tens of millions of dollars to the State of Illinois and other creditors.

With regard to the choice to reopen the hospital anyway, Ford again accused the hospital owner of putting his own interests before those of the community.

"Well, it appears that this doctor is doing exactly what's, you know, good for him. I mean, I think that if he goes to court with his eviction procedure, he could say: 'Look, you can't put me out, because I'm operating a hospital here. We're taking care of patients,'" said Ford, "and so he's probably just trying to use this as a way to go to court to benefit himself. But it's clearly not to the benefit of the community, and the community don't wany anything to do with this doctor being in charge of the hospital anymore."

Ford added that even though West Suburban has resumed some services, he advises people not to go.

"Bad health care is worse than no health care, because you have a situation where people will go there depending on safety, and patient and safety standards, when they're not being provided that," Ford said. "So it's better that people don't go there, so that they can go where there are some regulations and safety protocols in place."

West Suburban is a safety net hospital which takes in patients regardless of whether they can pay. Its sudden closure left many patients on the West Side of Chicago and the city's west suburbs with fewer options for affordable health care. 

Furloughed staff are also returning to support operations at West Suburban. A family medicine physician said he wants to help reopen the hospital for the community it serves.