West Suburban Medical Center closing temporarily as it runs out of cash to pay employees

West Suburban Medical Center is temporarily shutting its doors this week as it struggles to pay employees, according to the Oak Park hospital’s owner, Manoj Prasad.

Prasad, the CEO of Resilience Healthcare, said in an email Wednesday to the Sun-Times the hospital’s emergency room, inpatient units and clinics are closing, “effective immediately.” He blamed the hospital’s new electronic medical record system for the payroll issues.

“Exactly one year ago, West Suburban Medical Center transitioned to a new electronic medical record system that has never functioned correctly,” Prasad wrote in the email. “Despite 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.”

He said hospital leadership “developed and deployed a labor-intensive manual work-around to bill and collect revenue.” While that strategy has been effective, he said that process will take time to fully catch up on billing.

“This 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,” Prasad wrote. “At the same time, normal operating expenses need to be met, even while prices are climbing.”

Because of that, the hospital will “temporarily 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,” he wrote. Prasad did not specify how long that would be.

The newspaper Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest was the first to report West Suburban’s closure.

The closing of West Suburban comes eight months after Resilience Healthcare’s other facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital, shuttered. The hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood closed last July after losing Medicare and Medicaid funding. Weiss had been plagued with issues for many months, including a broken air conditioning system and a dysfunctional emergency room.

At the time, Prasad warned in a news conference that West Suburban could meet a similar fate.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Contributing: Kristen Schorsch