A few weeks back there was a quickly organized meeting held at the Oak Park library to figure out what role community members from the West Side and Oak Park could play in salvaging West Suburban Hospital.
I reported on it at the time: Palpable energy, deep frustration, and distrust of the failed leadership of Manoj Prasad, the CEO of Resilience Health. Anger. And then some good thinking from people representing multiple constituencies – dislodged staff, activists, public-health pros.
Now the fight for West Sub heads to a Cook County court hearing for the first time this Friday. It will be Prasad vs. Patlola (Rathnaker Reddy Patlola, CEO of Ramco Holdings). And it promises to be a mess as Patlola, the owner of all the property and buildings that make up West Sub and the also shuttered Weiss Memorial in Uptown, tee off about the obvious mismanagement of an already teetering institution, allegations of fraud and profound doubts that either of these men have the genuine interests of our communities at heart.
I go back, though, to the library meeting which started, as do so many community meetings, with introductions from the 75-plus people crowded into the first floor meeting room at the main library.
More than the smarts and the passion that quickly became clear, I was taken with how many of these people spoke first about their personal connections to this once-vital health-care institution. “My baby was born here,” was the most common introduction. A fiery Tara Stamps, our local Cook County commissioner, started hot with condemnation of first Prasad and then of state regulatory agencies, which have clearly failed. But then she began to talk about her uncle and the gentle care he received at West Sub over a stretch of time.
Put me in mind of the Haley family’s West Sub connections over decades. It is where my dad died 30 years ago. Middle of the night. Frank Haley’s three sons with him. Moving quickly toward his death, fighting for a breath, seeming a bit of panic rising. And Annie, his nurse, with our grateful consent shifting from intervention to palliative care. An increase in pain meds. Lights turned low. And within a couple of hours a gentle death.
Our 2-year-old son also made a panicked visit to the old and crappy ER when he got into his grandmother’s heart meds while seemingly taking a nap. He was slipping away from us when we got to West Sub. But wonderful care in that cramped ER and a rapid transfer to Loyola brought him back around.
Connections to a community hospital are profound.
The unraveling of this hospital has been underway for decades. A half dozen changes in ownership tells you that bad decisions were made, that disinvestment has been baked into the operation. That West Sub wound up in the hands of such non-capitalized amateurs makes clear how dire this circumstance had become.
But the fight to save West Sub is going to be hard, seems unlikely that either Prasad or Patlola are part of the solution, and the effort to keep this from being a pure real estate play by Patlola may be impossible. Community activism seems a long shot but is, maybe, the best hope.