Weiss has since filed an appeal with the federal government of its termination from the Medicare program, said state Sen. Mike Simmons, D-Chicago, citing information he said he received from Sen. Tammy Duckworth\u2019s office. Prasad previously said that although he hoped to reopen the hospital, the process could take a year or longer<\/a>.<\/p>\n West Suburban in Oak Park remains open, but Prasad warned at an August news conference<\/a> that West Suburban could face a similar fate as Weiss, saying, \u201cAny hospital can do that, I hate to say, with the environment that has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n The documents obtained by the Tribune include 18 letters from DHFS to Weiss and West Suburban leaders, warning them that monthly hospital assessment payments had not been received and that late payment penalties had been added.<\/p>\n In Illinois, hospitals must pay a hospital assessment tax, which is collected by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. The state uses that money to draw down additional federal matching dollars. Those combined funds are then distributed to hospitals in Illinois based on the number of services they provide to people on Medicaid in a given time frame.<\/p>\n Two April 2025 letters, addressed to Prasad, noted that, \u201cThe Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) is committed to ensuring that hospitals meet their financial obligations to the State of Illinois and requires your cooperation in planning for repayment of this debt.\u201d The letters note that the debt for both hospitals went back to September 2022 \u2014\u2013 several months after the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board approved of the hospitals\u2019 sale<\/a> to Resilience but also several months before the deal actually closed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The letters asked that the hospitals enter into repayment plans by Aug. 1, 2025, and warned that hospitals with outstanding tax debt that didn\u2019t enter into agreements by that date would face financial penalties and \u201crecoupment measures.\u201d<\/p>\n Though both hospitals entered into repayment agreements, they\u2019re not in compliance with those agreements, Kula said. The hospitals have not paid back any of the more than $69 million they owe, Kula said. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services is in the process of recouping funds from Weiss, and is \u201creviewing next steps\u201d when it comes to West Suburban, she said.<\/p>\n Though it\u2019s not unusual for safety net hospitals to struggle financially, the majority of Illinois\u2019 safety net hospitals are not behind on their hospital assessment program payments, Kula said.<\/p>\n Ruth Castillo, a member of the Lakeside Area Neighbors Association, called the amount owed by Weiss and West Suburban \u201cdisappointing and shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, she said, she\u2019s holding out hope that Weiss will reopen.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such an important resource for so many people in this area, not only as a health care provider, but it provides so many jobs to people in this area,\u201d Castillo said.<\/p>\n Marc Kaplan, co-chair of Northside Action for Justice, said the unpaid taxes are \u201canother reflection of what we think is a lack of commitment to maintain either hospital.\u201d Kaplan\u2019s group is part of a coalition of organizations hoping to save Weiss.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s another big kind of alarm bell, so to speak, about what we\u2019re faced with here,\u201d Kaplan said.<\/p>\n Resilience, a for-profit company, bought the two hospitals in late 2022<\/a> from California-based Pipeline Health for $92 million. At the time, Resilience was a newly created company led by Prasad, who said his initial training was as a physician but who spent later years of his career working as a hospital leader and consultant. Prasad bought the hospitals with financial partner and business owner Reddy Rathnaker Patlola. The plan was for Patlola\u2019s company Ramco Healthcare Holdings to own the land on which the hospitals sat, with Resilience entering into long-term lease agreements with Patlola. Patlola could not be reached for comment Wednesday.<\/p>\n Prasad said, at the time, that his first priority would be to stop the financial bleeding at the hospitals.<\/p>\n The hospitals\u2019 previous owner, Pipeline, had also pledged to turn around the hospitals when it bought them from Tenet Healthcare<\/a> in 2019 but quickly angered the community<\/a> by closing a third Melrose Park hospital it bought as part of the same deal. In 2022, before selling Weiss and West Suburban, Pipeline filed for bankruptcy<\/a>, and Weiss and West Suburban posted combined net losses of $69.7 million during the 12 months leading up to August 2022.<\/p>\n Prasad said during the August news conference that Weiss had been losing more than $30 million annually for several years when Resilience took it over. Together, Weiss and West Suburban had an $81 million debt to vendors, he said at the time.<\/p>\n Prasad said at the August news conference that Resilience had to cut certain services but continued to meet its payroll at Weiss. He said Weiss \u201chit a wall\u201d in the spring because of problems with bill collections.<\/p>\n Weiss\u2019 troubles peaked earlier this year when air conditioning equipment failed, prompting an investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state health department found temperatures as high as nearly 89 degrees in the hospital\u2019s intensive care unit and nearly 87 degrees in the emergency department, according to an IDPH memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.<\/p>\n Weiss moved all of its inpatients to West Suburban and other hospitals because of the heat.<\/p>\n The federal government said that in addition to the problems with the hospital\u2019s \u201cphysical environment,\u201d Weiss was also out of compliance with rules related to emergency services and nursing services, in its notice of the hospital\u2019s termination from Medicare. The hospital has also lost its ability to get Medicaid dollars, in accordance with federal regulations and state law.<\/p>\n Weiss was slated to receive an additional $4 million in state dollars this year because of its status as a safety net hospital, but cannot receive that money while it\u2019s terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, Simmons said.<\/p>\n Originally Published: October 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The now-shuttered Weiss Memorial Hospital and its sister hospital West Suburban Medical Center owe more than $69 million…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":310552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,5404,210,1141,1142,1818,2765,1370,728,50,14703,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-310551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-keywee","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-oak-park","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115389176551876133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"West](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/CTC-L-Weiss-Hospital-Follow-18.jpg\")
West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, operated by Resilience Healthcare, is seen on Aug. 8, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n