When 2 hospitals close: Atlanta’s answer vs. Chicago’s void

Two Chicago-area safety-net hospitals have closed within a year of each other — both owned by Princeton, N.J.-based Resilience Healthcare — and no health system, buyer or partner has publicly committed to reopening either.

Chicago-based Weiss Memorial Hospital, a 239-bed acute care facility, closed Aug. 8, 2025, as CMS moved to terminate its Medicare participation over noncompliance with federal standards for emergency services, nursing services and the physician environment. About 55% of Weiss patients were covered by Medicare and roughly 30% by Medicaid, a payer mix that left too few commercially insured patients to sustain the hospital once Medicare reimbursement ended.

Oak Park, Ill.-based West Suburban Medical Center, Weiss’ sister hospital, closed June 11, after its last working elevator broke down. The hospital on June 30 notified staff of a “mass layoff” effective Aug. 31 that it said is “expected to be permanent,” according to an employee letter obtained by Becker’s. 

The closures capped a financial unraveling at Resilience, which acquired the two Chicago hospitals from El Segundo, Calif.-based Pipeline Health System in January 2023. 

However, Chicago has absorbed this kind of loss before. 

Twenty hospitals in the city closed between 2000 and 2022, nearly 25% of its total, according to Chicago Policy Review. Last year, Ascension St. Elizabeth closed before Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare acquired it and eight other Illinois hospitals, and Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred closed two Chicago area long-term acute care hospitals.

Atlanta offers a different trajectory.

Atrium Health on June 18 filed a letter of determination to build its first hospital in metro Atlanta, partnering with Morehouse School of Medicine on a short-stay acute care teaching hospital in Fulton County, Ga. The facility would open with 50 beds as the anchor of a 40-acre mixed-use campus.

In public statements, Atrium Health framed the project as a response to closures. The proposed hospital is intended to address care gaps left by two WellStar Health System shutdowns: WellStar AMC South in May 2022 and WellStar Atlanta Medical Center in November 2022. Under the filing, the new hospital cannot exceed 50% of the 762 short-stay beds Atlanta Medical Center held at closure, capping it near 381 beds.

Atlanta-based Grady Health System absorbed the largest influx of patients following the closures and expanded capacity by 180 beds with $130 million in state and federal funding. It also opened neighborhood and specialty clinics. Even so, local leaders have said Atlanta still needs additional hospital capacity to replace the 198-bed AMC South campus and the 460-bed Atlanta Medical Center.

Atrium Health has the scale to make that investment. It is part of Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health, which operates 69 hospitals across six states, and already has a Georgia footprint through Atrium Health Navicent and Atrium Health Floyd.

That scale is also at the heart of Chicago’s challenge.

Rebuilding safety-net capacity in a major urban market requires a well-capitalized operator willing to absorb a Medicare- and Medicaid-heavy payer mix — the same economics that contributed to Weiss’ collapse. No comparable system has signaled interest in Weiss, on Chicago’s North Side, or West Suburban, on the city’s West Side.

However, one major investment is underway elsewhere in the city. Advocate Health Care — also part of Advocate Health — broke ground on a $300 million hospital earlier this month. The 52-bed hospital will replace the current Advocate Trinity Hospital and serve as the centerpiece for the health system’s $1 billion investment in Chicago’s South Side.

For now, pressure to reopen West Suburban is coming from its landlord rather than another health system. Rathnaker Patlola, who owns the hospital’s real estate through Ramco Healthcare Holdings, said the layoff notice violates “the spirit and the letter” of his agreement with Resilience and vowed to take action to ensure the hospital reopens. Manoj Prasad, MD, PhD, Resilience’s CEO, issued the layoff notice. 

Becker’s has reached out to West Suburban for comment.

State officials, meanwhile, have underscored the limits of their authority. The Illinois Department of Public Health said the situation was created by a private company, that it received no advance notice of the service suspensions or layoffs, and that it lacks authority over employment decisions, even as it remains “deeply concerned about workforce stability in community hospitals.”

The strategic takeaway for hospital leaders watching from other markets: closures are increasingly clustering at financially fragile safety-net hospitals, and restoring access depends less on regulators than on whether a well-capitalized health system is willing to step in.

Atlanta has a plan to help restore lost capacity. Chicago is still waiting for one.

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