Feds revoke Weiss Memorial's Medicare access
Weiss Memorial Hospital can no longer accept Medicare patients following an Illinois Department of Public Health investigation.
The state health department surveyed the hospital and reported its findings to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The federal agency then decided to "terminate Weiss' involvement with the Medicare program effective August 9, 2025," IDPH said in a Friday statement.
"The Illinois Department of Public Health has been closely monitoring the situation at Weiss Memorial Hospital. As required by law, the results of our surveys of the hospital are shared with the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services," the statement says.
In a public notice, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Weiss isn't complying with the agency's requirements for "nursing services, emergency services and physical environment." It did not go into the specifics of the violations.
Last month, the Sun-Times reported the hospital's owner failed to fix its aging air conditioning system.
The Medicare program will stop making payments for inpatient hospital services for patients admitted on or after Aug. 9, 2025.
Medicare made up 56% of all the revenue Weiss reported in 2023, the most recent year available, Illinois public health records show.
The safety-net hospital, owned by Resilience Healthcare, evacuated its entire inpatient unit last month after hospital staff discovered that three out of the four air conditioning units were not working. Temperatures inside the building rose to 90 degrees.
At the time, Resilience Healthcare's owner and chief executive, Dr. Manoj Prasad, blamed the problem, which forced the hospital to transfer or discharge 45 patients, on an aging air conditioning system that had not been maintained by previous owners. Prasad, who bought the hospital in 2022, told reporters it would take weeks to fix the systems.
It's unclear if the hospital reopened. Employees were still working at the hospital Friday afternoon when a Sun-Times reporter visited, but it wasn't clear if patients were being treated. Prasad did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
When the AC failed, 22 patients were moved to an unused wing at Resilience Healthcare’s other hospital, West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. One patient's family told the Sun-Times that conditions weren't much better at West Suburban as temperatures neared 90 degrees inside their hospital room.
In November, West Suburban abruptly cut ties with a family medicine practice that for decades had delivered babies at the hospital.