OAK PARK — By the end of the week, neighbors in Austin and other West Side communities will have one less medical facility they can turn to for care.
West Suburban Medical Center, a safety-net hospital at 3 Erie St, Oak Park that primarily serves low-income patients on Chicago’s West Side, will shut down all operations beginning Friday, said Manoj Prasad, president and CEO of the facility’s parent company.
In a written statement, Prasad described the closure as a temporary solution to longstanding revenue shortfalls made worse by a problematic new billing system.
The physician group contracted to run the emergency department pulled its team out of the hospital on Wednesday, meaning some patients in need of emergency care will have to travel farther to other hospitals.
The shutdown will also put hundreds of people out of work. West Suburban had about 600 full-time employees, according to the most recent data available from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Brandon Killingsworth, an ER technician at West Suburban, told Block Club he was shocked when he learned he would soon be without a job.
“Just abruptly putting us all out when that community needs the hospital is just not right at all,” Killingsworth said. “It’s just sad and now stressful for all of us. … Less than a week [notice] when all of us have bills to pay.”
Resilience Healthcare CEO Dr. Manoj Prasad addressing reporters alongside state representatives La Shawn Ford and Camille Lilly, Aug. 8, 2025. Credit: Charles Thrush/Block Club Chicago
In an email to staff on Wednesday, Prasad wrote that the hospital was engaging in “a manual and very tedious process” to collect unpaid bills. The funds were needed to make payroll, he wrote in the email, which an employee shared with Block Club Chicago.
“The numbers indicated that at least half of our work was not getting billed, but nobody could understand why,” Prasad’s email said. As a result, for the last year, the hospital was forced to operate on just a fraction of its needed revenue, according to Prasad’s statement.
But two sources with knowledge of the hospital’s operations painted a starkly different picture. They said the closure is unlikely to be just temporary. The sources blamed chronic mismanagement that they say has led to inadequate care and dangerous conditions for some patients. Both sources are concerned about retaliation and asked that their names be withheld.
They said the hospital’s billing problems didn’t happen in a vacuum. They said the hospital fell behind in its own payments to its previous records management company, and Prasad switched to a new vendor to avoid paying up.
The hospital then lost access to old patient records and started doing everything manually. This resulted in the hospital not billing patients for almost six months, the sources said.
Prasad “didn’t realize he couldn’t transfer most of his own records and continue billing patients,” one of the sources, who worked at the hospital, told Block Club.
The source said the hospital has now retreated “into the 1990s,” as it rushes to work through paper records and send bills to patients who fell through the cracks.
West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, across the street from Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, on March 18, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
The hospital’s financial problems go beyond records and billing.
West Suburban and its parent company, Resilience Healthcare, have been sued by at least two other contractors for millions of dollars in overdue payments, the Forest Park Review previously reported.
“The current situation at the hospital is that it’s understaffed, it doesn’t have basic materials for patient care such as basic swabs and gauze, and nurses are frequently running out of day-to-day stuff,” the source who used to work at the hospital told Block Club, adding that critical equipment is often unreliable.
The situation is like “running a hospital in a third-world country,” the source said.
Prasad refuted the claims from Block Club’s sources. He dismissed his critics as “armchair quarterbacks” and called on them to identify themselves publicly.
“Also ask them, if they know so much about managing hospitals, where were they hiding in December 2022 when no one came forth to save the hospital and it was scheduled to permanently close?” Prasad said to Block Club.
Resilience Healthcare, which is controlled by Prasad, purchased West Suburban and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown for $92 million in 2022. A month after the deal, Prasad said the hospitals had significant debt but promised they would “flourish” under his leadership.
“We don’t need more closed-down hospitals,” he said.
But during Prasad’s tenure, West Suburban made significant cuts in the services it offered to patients. This included ending its relationship with PCC Wellness, a nonprofit healthcare organization that provided midwives and family medicine physicians to West Suburban.
In June the hospital lost the accreditation it needed to continue operating as a teaching hospital, which brought in young doctors. The 55-year-old program ended after more than two dozen doctors raised concerns about the conditions of the hospital and the lack of guidance from veteran physicians. At the time, Prasad said the pause in the program was temporary. But it’s never resumed.
Dr. Manoj Prasad speaking at a press conference on June 18, 2025. Credit: Charles Thrush / Block Club Chicago
And in July, the hospital shuttered its labor and delivery, postpartum and nursery units, firing six staff members in the middle of their shifts, according to the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest.
Weeks later, Weiss Memorial shut down after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services booted them from the health insurance program for not being compliant with federal requirements.
Once again, Prasad said the issues were temporary. But Weiss has not re-opened.
Officials with the Illinois Department of Public Health, which is responsible for providing oversight of West Suburban, are aware the hospital stopped accepting patients by ambulance on Wednesday and is set to “suspend all hospital services” by Friday, said Jim Leach, a department spokesperson.
“We are disappointed by the lack of advance notice and clear communication from hospital leadership,” Leach said. “Transparency and advance notice are essential in order to safely transition and protect patients, staff, and the communities it serves.”
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