West Suburban Medical Center is located on the Oak Park side of Austin Boulevard, which serves as the border between Oak Park and Chicago. (Photo by Igor Studenkov/For Chronicle Media)

Medical professionals and community activists are trying to push elected officials and state regulators to take action on issues affecting West Suburban Medical Center. 

The hospital is located on the Oak Park side of Austin Boulevard, which serves as the border between Oak Park and Chicago. Around 80 percent of the patients live in Austin and other Chicago West Side neighborhoods. According to the Illinois state data, most of the patients are on some Medicaid or Medicare plan.  

During the past two decades, programs, staffing and resources shrank as West Suburban changed ownership several times. When Michigan-based Resilience Healthcare took over in late 2022, it promised a new direction, but concerns persisted.  

In mid-November, the hospital announced that it would revoke admitting privileges from nurses and family doctors working for PCC Family Service Center, ending a relationship that goes back to the latter’s origins four decades ago. West Suburban justified the change as a liability issue, a rationale that PCC questioned, especially since the issue hasn’t surfaced at other hospitals where PCC has admitting privileges. 

For community organizations and activists with ties on both sides of Austin Boulevard, the news was a catalyst to delve deeply into issues plaguing the hospital and push for action. Crystal Gardner, an Austin union organizer with a long history of activism, has been spearheading the effort.  

PCC Wellness Center began as Parent Child Center, a three-room clinic that opened inside West Suburban in 1980 to offer “prenatal, postpartum, and infant care for underserved residents of Chicago’s Austin community.”

It has since expanded to include 14 health centers on Chicago’s West and Northwest sides and in the western suburbs, but it maintained a presence at West Suburban, and its midwives and family medicine doctors worked at the hospital.  

According to the American College of Nurse-Midwives, the involvement of midwifes reduces pregnancy complications such as premature births, and generally reduces infant mortality rates. This is a particularly important concern in Black and Hispanic communities. According to CDC, as of 2021, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 69.9 per 10,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women — 26.6 per 10,000 live births. The rate for Hispanic women of all races was 28 deaths per 10,000 live births.  

West Suburban opened in 1913 and, for most of its history, operated as a nonprofit. It was acquired by the Loyola University Health System in 1996, but the Maywood-based health system sold it to Resurrection Healthcare three years later. 

Between 2004 and 2022, West Suburban went through four more ownership changes, and no entity owned it for longer than five years.  

When Resilience Healthcare took over, CEO Manoj Prasad promised major investment, saying that he wanted to restore an internal medicine medical residency program, which had lost its accreditation, improve mental healthcare and expand its cancer care. But even before the admission privileges issue arose, there were signs of trouble. Austin Weekly News newspaper reported that, back in early May, most of the hospital’s resident doctors rallied to call out what they described as worsening conditions inside the building and a lack of resources. They alleged that the building elevators and air conditioning broke down. Prasad reportedly acknowledged that the building did experience maintenance issues, but he insisted that they were getting addressed. 

While the residence program got its accreditation back since Resilience’s takeover, by last spring, the West Suburban faculty reportedly asked the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to review the status of the program — which could have resulted in the accreditation getting revoked again. 

In an open letter released in late November, the residents called out chronic shortages of supplies, including epidermal kits on the labor and delivery floor. They alleged that, in August, the hospital’s dialysis service was cut because of nonpayment, forcing West Suburban to send patients requiring emergency dialysis to other hospitals — something that Prasad reportedly attributed to a change in vendors.  

During the summer, West Suburban announced that, effective July 16, 2024, “we will have an experienced Board Certified OB/GYN available to take care of you around the clock, in addition to our Nurse Midwives.” 

On Nov. 18, said midwives and family doctors were told that they would lose admission privileges effective Nov. 29. That was moved to Dec. 6. According to Austin Weekly News, three OB/GYNs would continue providing services, and OB Hospitalist Group, a Greenville, South Carolina-based medical staffing firm, would provide support.  

In the press release posted in early December, West Suburban described the change as a “new chapter, with a nationally recognized team of experienced OB/GYNs providing all labor and delivery care 24/7.”  

“This provides the community access to a higher quality of care as we advance our mission to reduce the unacceptably high maternal and infant mortality rates in Black and Brown families,” the hospital stated. “New and expectant mothers who come to West Suburban can expect to receive the highest quality care from experts in this field who reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.” 

The statement mentioned that the hospital is “hopeful” that midwives “will become a part of this new chapter,” stating that they are welcome to work “with our highly trained OB/GYNs to continue to provide care stands and we are hopeful they will accept.” 

In a statement on its Facebook page shortly after the initial announcement broke, PCC described West Suburban’s decision as “controversial and disheartening.” 

“The providers and staff at PCC Community Wellness Center are doing what we’ve always done: walking alongside our patients during their birth journey to ensure they have access to quality, affordable care,” it stated. 

Since then, PCC has been working with several organizations to rally the community. Notable participants include Austin Coming Together coalition and A House in Austin, a nonprofit launched by an Oak Park couple to provide supportive services for Austin mothers. They also got support from Cook County commissioner Tara Stamps, D-1st, whose district includes Oak Park and Austin, and 37th Ward Ald. Emma Mitts, whose ward includes about a third of Austin, but notably the section across the street from West Suburban. 

Gardner told Chronicle Media that she was invited to get involved in early December. She was tagged in a post in Activate Oak Park, a Facebook group that has been a hub of Oak Park related left-leaning activism. Crystal ended up attending a Dec. 5 organizing meeting. 

“There was a need for an organizer and plan of action,” Crystal said. “I was volunteered, and I accepted it.” 

She said that the press conference will just be a starting point for a broader push. 

“[We will] amplify this issue, so that the community is aware of it, and identify the demands centered around exposing the conditions at West Suburban,” Gardner said. “[We will be] exposing and addressing the subpar conditions of West Suburban Medical Center and the history of disinvestment from Austin and the West Side neighborhoods.”