A group of Uptown residents are making an effort to prevent the closure of a hospital that pared down critical services after its removal as a Medicare and Medicaid provider.
Uptown’s Weiss Memorial Hospital closed its emergency room and inpatient services in August after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to terminate the hospital from its program.
A letter from the Department of Health and Human services sent to owner Dr. Manoj Prasad said the hospital was not compliant with physical environment and emergency services standards. Inspection records, obtained by NBC 5 Investigates, show that CMS made the decision to terminate Medicare funding earlier this year after state health inspectors visited the hospital for a complaint investigation.
During that investigation in early July, inspectors with the Illinois Department of Public Health found problems with a makeshift emergency department that had been set up in the wake of air conditioning troubles – which have plagued the hospital all summer.
One medical director told a state health inspector that the emergency department had no tourniquet available to stop the bleeding for a patient who had badly injured their hand in a fireworks accident. The medical workers had to make one using an ACE bandage wrap, and the patient was eventually transferred to another hospital.
On Monday morning, a group of lawmakers and Uptown community members met in a last-ditch effort to re-open the hospital, signing petitions for Prasad to appeal the CMS decision by a September 24 deadline. The group blamed Prasad for neglecting the infrastructure through cost-cutting measures.
“Prasad has made almost no effort to meet with community and local elected officials to share a plan to repair and save Weiss,” said Lilly Le of the Vietnamese Association of Illinois.
In a response to NBC Chicago, Prasad said he’s made multiple attempts to secure necessary funding for the hospital since acquiring it in 2022.
“In spring of 2023, Weiss Memorial Hospital invited all the lawmakers and gave them a tour of the hospital showing them the infrastructure that desperately needed to be fixed. We implored them to get us some grants in the upcoming budget to make essential repairs and get essential medical equipment that had not been repaired in the past. We got nothing while other hospitals got millions of dollars. We were told to try the following year,” his statement said.
“One year later, in spring of 2024, we again invited all the lawmakers to the hospital who kindly came and toured the facility. We again begged for safety net grants,” he added.
The state gave the hospital $2 million. State Rep. Hoan Huynh of the 13th district and Sen. Mike Simmons of the 7th district said they allocated another $4 million to Weiss Hospital in the Fiscal Year 2025 budget, but Prasad said he never received the funds.
“The reason why is we want to make sure there’s accountability for the $4 million that goes out the door,” Huynh said.
The hospital’s Medicaid termination comes amid broader fears of widespread Medicaid cuts for communities reliant on those services.
“This partial closure is just a taste of what’s to come now that $1 trillion of Medicaid cuts were passed by Republicans in congress,” said Peter Fugiel, a former Medicaid patient at Weiss.
Prasad told NBC 5 he would be able to file an appeal by the deadline.
