State Legislators Push for Funding To Reopen Closed South Suburban Medical Center
State Legislators Push for Funding To Reopen Closed South Suburban Medical Center
During a recent Appropriations-Human Services Committee hearing, members of the committee discussed new legislation that would provide funding to reopen the building that was home to MetroSouth Medical Center, 12935 S. Gregory St., in Blue Island and turn it into a free-standing emergency center.
If the legislation passes, the transformation of MetroSouth Medical Center, which recently closed after months of pushback from the community and local legislators, would be made possible through roughly $8 million in state funding.
“There is no plan for that building and that’s the point of starting this conversation. This is just the start of a plan or a model to use but we have to start somewhere and we can’t just keep waiting to hear about the community impact from the next closure,” said State Rep. Robert Rita (D- Blue Island).
Representative Rita has been a fierce leader in the fight to keep MetroSouth Medical Center open and now that it has effectively stopped all services and been approved for closure by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board, Rita is looking at how to reopen the building as a free-standing emergency room for the community.
“If you look at the whole Southland area, this is going to have a tremendous impact as we go forward and we have to think about who’s going to be next,” said Rita. “The answer is not to just keep throwing money at these hospitals to keep them standing up, we should be looking at what services each hospital offers and how can they work together to share resources and create transfer agreements for the services they are providing in all these areas.”
Rita went on to say that if nothing is done to unite the medical community in the Greater Southland Region, it will cause inequalities based on who has easier access to medical services.
“What’s going to happen is you’re going to have a major divide of the haves and have-nots,” said Rita.
The Illinois legislation that is being considered would allow state funding that was already approved to be used for hospital transformation, through the state’s Hospital Assessment Program, to be used to transform the MetroSouth Medical Center building.
“These dollars were already allocated to this area for transformation, and this is transformation, and that’s my argument. We can always change this idea if there is a better plan or a better way of approaching this but I believe this is a pretty solid way of moving forward,” said Rita.
The bill is currently up for consideration by the Illinois senate and will soon undergo another vote. If the legislation passes in the Senate it will go on to be approved by Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker.
“We need to do something because otherwise, that building is just going to sit there until spring and by the time we get to May what is going to happen? I am asking that we move this forward and continue to move this forward,” said Rita.
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