The shutdown follows a decision in May by Mercy, Advocate Trinity Hospital in Calumet Heights, South Shore Hospital in South Chicago and St. Bernard Hospital in Englewood not to pursue a planned merger. State lawmakers failed to set aside funding for the deal.
Mercy plans to close between February and May. It hopes to establish an outpatient care center, but details about timing and location are still being determined.
“The decision to discontinue services at Mercy Hospital was not an easy one,” Carol Schneider, hospital president, said in a statement. “The transformation from an inpatient model to one with greater access to outpatient services will better address the disparate outcomes in health from which our community suffers today.”
Community groups and labor unions decried the decision as another hit to African Americans living and working on the South Side.
People in the surrounding neighborhoods will have to go outside their community for treatment, which can be difficult if they’re experiencing life-threatening situations or don’t have transportation, said Deborah Harris, executive director of Action Now, which works to empower Black families on the city’s West and South sides.
She said closing the hospital, especially now, amid COVID-19, “is outright telling me you do not care about Black folks, brown folks, disenfranchised folks finding access to health care.”
Teamsters Local 743 represents about 300 of Mercy’s 1,680 employees, including food service, housekeeping and transportation workers, said local union President Debra Simmons-Peterson.
Mercy’s closure will be “devastating to the community, not having that hospital there and also to my members that have been there for 20 to 30 years,” Simmons-Peterson said. “Some of them, that’s the only job they’ve ever had, and now they’ll be without employment.”
Anne Igoe, vice president of health systems for SEIU Healthcare Illinois, said she’s disappointed in the decision given the size of Mercy’s owner, Trinity Health, which acquired it in 2012. Trinity has 92 hospitals and had $9.7 billion in operating revenue for the last six months of 2019.
The SEIU doesn’t represent workers at Mercy, but it does represent workers at other South Side hospitals and had hoped the proposed merger would improve care on the South Side.
According to the hospital, Trinity has spent over $124 million on improvements at Mercy and more than $112 million to help Mercy meet short-term operating needs.
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