Pipeline Health on Wednesday offered to turn over ownership of Westlake Hospital to the village of Melrose Park.
“If Melrose Park truly values Westlake Hospital and is so sure it can do a better job of either running this antiquated facility or finding a buyer, they should take us up on this offer,” Pipeline CEO Jim Edwards said in a statement.
The village rejected the offer outright.
Pipeline Health said Westlake Hospital loses about $2 million a month and “threaten Pipeline’s ability to turn around its two other Chicago-area hospitals, Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital and Oak Park’s West Suburban Medical Center.”
Pipeline faces a deadline Thursday morning restore most services or face fines of $200,000 a day for violating a temporary restraining order.
At a court hearing Tuesday, Pipeline Health said staffing issues caused it to suspend services and any violation of the temporary restraining order happened because it was issued after it already began cutting services.
Pipeline Health has asked permission to close Westlake. The petition is expected to be considered April 30 at a meeting of the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
Melrose Park spokesman Andrew Mack said the proposal to transfer ownership was a bad-faith offer by Pipeline Health, which took over the hospital in February.
“It is clearly a stunt on the front of Pipeline to get out of their responsibilities again,” Mack said. “They’ve lied to the community about keeping the hospital open, they violated the terms of the temporary restraining order, and now they are doing this.”
Mack said Melrose Park has no interest in becoming a hospital operator. The village’s position, he said, has always been to hold businesses accountable to the community.
“It is arrogant elitism and it’s outrageous they would even suggest this,” Mack said.
Edwards also criticized state Rep. Chris Welch, a hospital trustee, for votes in Springfield that hurt Westlake’s funding.
“Rep. Chris Welch has been chairman of the board for 10 years at Westlake and knew full well the hospital’s financial challenges when he voted in Springfield to deprive the hospital of funding,” Edwards said. “He failed in his job as a board chairman and legislator.”
“They want to insult everyone by offering a hospital to a village,” Welch said. ““Pipeline knew the situation of Westlake Hospital in September 2018 when they swore under oath to keep it open for at least two years.”
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Manny Ramos is a corps member in Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of issues affecting Chicago’s South and West sides.
