Advocate Bethany Hospital on Chicago’s West Side is in financial trouble. It says it lost $55 million in the last eight years. The owners don’t want to tear down the hospital and build condos.
But they do want to turn it into a long-term, acute-care facility, meeting another health need on the West Side. They want to care for patients with complex conditions, including heart disease, cancer, stroke and kidney disease.
Astonishingly, a state board on Tuesday told them: Not so fast, you must keep losing money.
The board told Advocate it must continue to operate its obstetrics and psychiatric units at Bethany, even if they’re a drain on the company.
How bizarre.
Well maybe not so bizarre, if you consider that the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board might have been thinking about politics and crowd-pleasing rather than health care. Some neighborhood activists have loudly protested the proposed changes at Bethany.
Let’s get back to health care for a minute. The planning board’s own staff concluded last week that converting Bethany Hospital would not hurt health care on Chicago’s West Side. There are six hospitals located within 10 minutes of Bethany that can handle patients who might be displaced as the hospital moves to long-term care.
At the meeting Tuesday, board chairwoman Susan Lopatka argued that many of the surrounding medical centers would have difficulty absorbing an influx of uninsured patients. She told Advocate that the mission of a not-for-profit medical care organization is to serve the poor.
But is part of its mission that it must–by government fiat–lose money? Year after year? No matter what? That’s what the health facilities panel is telling Bethany.
It’s telling Bethany that even though only one baby has been delivered in its obstetrics unit since February, that unit must remain open.
It’s telling Bethany that even though its psychiatric unit is less than half filled it, too, cannot be closed.
It’s telling Bethany that even though last year only half of the hospital’s 128 beds were filled on an average day, it cannot make these changes.
Advocate spokesman Tony Mitchell says Bethany will proceed with plans to accept some long-term acute-care patients, which does not require state approval. But its larger plans, which include establishing a community health fund to support local health programs, are in question.
The Health Facilities Planning Board has been rocked in recent years by ethics problems.
A former vice chairman, Stuart Levine, was indicted last year on charges that he took kickbacks to steer board decisions.
The Tribune reported last year that a former chairman, Thomas Beck, voted for construction projects financed by a firm that had paid him more than $1 million in fees.
In 2004 Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed two members to the board just days after they made $50,000 in contributions to his political fund.
There have been other questions of conflict of interest at the board.
So what’s going on there now with the Bethany case? This is how the board proves that it’s back to dealing honestly with health care?
We argued two years ago that the board should be abolished. No more evidence is needed.
