The afternoon of July 3, six staff members in the middle of their shifts at West Suburban Medical Center’s Family Birthplace were escorted out of the hospital by security, according to multiple sources who work on the floor that consists of the labor and delivery, postpartum and nursery units.
West Suburban staff said they were told the three units would be closed indefinitely, and they would be suspended without pay, because of a shortage of nurses. But timesheets shared with Austin Weekly News show nurses were fully staffed on Thursday, July 3 and through that weekend.
Manoj Prasad – CEO of Resilience Healthcare, which bought West Sub and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood in December 2022 – and Carolyn Fitzpatrick, the hospital’s chief medical officer, have not responded to multiple interview requests.
As of July 10, suspended staff have received no official documentation or communication from any form of leadership at West Suburban. They don’t know if they should call off scheduled shifts or if they’ll be penalized if they don’t, and they’re using paid time off during the period of radio silence. Family Birthplace nurses haven’t heard any explanation to clarify why they were suspended from the floor or when it might reopen – including on the day they were dismissed.
On July 3, Family Birthplace nurses heard rumblings of the floor closing from three doctors and a custodian, but no one told them directly. Just before noon, the hospital’s head of security, four security guards and representatives from operations and HR came to the unit and asked the floor’s staff to meet. The operations representative told staff the unit was suspended for the weekend, and until further notice, because of a shortage of nurses.
The operations representative did not return Austin Weekly News’ request for comment.
Staff told the hospital representatives that they had adequate coverage – typically three nurses working in the labor and delivery unit and one in the nursery – and asked how long the suspension would last, but a representative said they wouldn’t be answering questions at that time and told staff to turn in their unit phones, badges and gather their items to be escorted from the hospital.
“They wouldn’t even let us ask any questions. They were aggressively against it,” said one Family Birthplace nurse, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. The nurse added that they feared physical forced removal from hospital administration.
“They might as well have had a cattle prod,” another nurse said. “This treatment was very traumatizing.”
While it’s not illegal to abruptly terminate employees this way, an Illinois Department of Public Health spokesperson previously told Austin Weekly News that the move is “concerning” and that the department would “be gathering more information about this action to ensure the hospital complies with its obligations under the Hospital Licensing Act.”
Nurses say they’ve been working as a skeleton crew since November, when midwives and family medicine physicians at West Sub were told they could no longer deliver babies at the hospital.
“They were bringing in most of our patients,” said the Family Birthplace nurse. But even with fewer mothers and infants on the floor, “if we were short [on nurses], no one cared.” Seemingly, until this month.
When the Family Birthplace floor closed on July 3, sources say there were no patients on the floor. Though one doctor was reportedly told to not cancel scheduled c-sections for the following week, he was later told to reschedule them at different hospitals.
With the current uncertainty of the Family Birthplace, sources said locals are still showing up at West Suburban to give birth.
“Although the unit is closed, the community has not been adequately notified,” the nurse said, citing several women who have been turned away.
Rising temperatures at West Sub
In late June, West Sub admitted 22 patients from Weiss Memorial after the Uptown hospital’s HVAC system failed. While a hospital spokesperson said West Sub replaced its HVAC system last year, a Freedom of Information request filed with the village of Oak Park to see public records of the hospital replacing its HVAC yielded no results.
And now there are reports of dangerously high temperatures at the Oak Park hospital, too.
The Family Birthplace closure comes after multiple nurses on the floor filed complaints with OSHA about the rising temperatures and lack of cooling measures inside West Suburban.
According to documentation showing one such complaint on June 27, OSHA responded that it had contacted West Sub administration and given them five business days to correct the hazards, or until July 4.
“You can’t help but think it’s retaliatory,” said a Family Birthplace nurse, who was among those suspended the day before.
According to multiple sources, temperatures have reached up to 90 degrees on the floor’s postpartum unit and 87 degrees in the nursery.
“It should not be that way,” a nurse said. The nurse added that rising temperatures aren’t just an issue at the Family Birthplace, but also in operating rooms on other floors, which have been temporarily closed down because of the heat. “We are a microcosm of the whole hospital right now.”
And though the nurses want to know what their future looks like at the hospital, they are also worried about their patients.
“We care about our community, and we care about our coworkers. We don’t want to abandon the people we serve. We work in a hospital in an underserved community for a reason,” one nurse said. With a closure like this, “It’s the community that suffers.”
