State Board Rejects Plans for Mercy Hospital Outpatient Center
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board denied Trinity Health’s plans to open a new outpatient center. Local politicians and activists see the plan as part of Trinity’s attempt to close Mercy. By
On Tuesday, January 26
th, the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board rejected an application by Mercy Hospital’s parent company, Trinity Health, to open an outpatient center on the South Side.
The $13 million outpatient center is part of a bid by Trinity to close Mercy Hospital, which has served Bronzeville and the greater South Side for over a century.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted Tuesday morning during a virtual meeting Tuesday morning.
Trinity Health had applied with the state to open Mercy as an outpatient clinic.
Under its $13 million proposal, the clinic would have provided the neighborhood with services like urgent care, x-rays and CT scans.
Community activists say turning the hospital into clinic would negatively impact the health of the surrounding neighborhood.
The same board sided with community members back in December when it unanimously voted to deny Trinity s application to close Mercy this year.
The Bronzeville neighborhood hospital and Chicago s oldest, serves mostly low-income residents, the elderly and people of color.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file
Trinity Health’s proposal to open an urgent care and diagnostic center on the South Side was rejected Tuesday by a state review board, the company’s second loss in about six weeks.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted 3-2 Tuesday to deny approval for Trinity Health’s planned $13 million Mercy Care Center at 3753 S. Cottage Grove Ave. The same board unanimously rejected Trinity Health’s plan to close Mercy Hospital in Bronzeville after a hearing Dec. 15.
“We are disappointed with the initial decision by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board and are evaluating our options to open an outpatient center on Chicago’s South Side,” Trinity Health said in a statement issued after the hearing.
Sun-Times file
Pointing to kids whose mental health hangs in the balance, workers at Roseland Community Hospital on Friday urged hospital executives to scrap plans to suspend service at its adolescent behavioral health unit as they revamp the program.
Tremaine White, a mental health counselor, said the suffering of mostly Black kids on the South Side who end up at the unit during perhaps the lowest points of their lives will inevitably be prolonged because of the suspension. There’s a lack of similar services offered in the area, White said.
When grandparents raising their grandkids are at the end of their rope, “we are their last hope” to address behavioral issues and keep the family together, White said during a virtual news conference.
It’s been quite a whirlwind for the new Illinois Speaker of the House Chris Welch, as he’s received more than one thousand text messages from all over the country as well-wishers congratulate the state legislature’s first-ever Black Speaker. “I got a call from the very first Black Speaker of the House ever, from California,” he said. “We talked forever.”.