State regulators have shot down a request by Endeavor Heallth to eliminate inpatient psychiatric services at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted 4-4 on Tuesday on Endeavor’s application to close the 52-bed unit at Northwest Community Hospital — meaning the motion to grant the request failed, said John Kniery, administrator for the board.
A spokesman for Endeavor did not immediately respond to Tribune questions Thursday afternoon about the vote or the future of inpatient psychiatric care at Northwest Community.
The state Health Facilities and Services Review Board has long expressed concern over communities losing services related to treatment of acute mental illness, and how cutting inpatient psychiatric units can affect wait times in emergency departments, among other issues.
Endeavor announced in late January that it planned to stop offering the services because of a decrease in demand and an increased focus on outpatient and community-based care and telehealth services. Endeavor said at the time that it expected the move to affect about 100 workers, though it hoped many of them would take other positions across the health system. Endeavor sent a notice in February to the llinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity saying that it planned to lay off 99 workers from the hospital.
Endeavor had planned to stop offering inpatient care for acute mental illness at the hospital April 11.
Endeavor said it did not believe that discontinuing those services at the hospital would affect access to care because there were still extra psychiatric inpatient beds at other Endeavor locations and throughout the region. In 2023, there were 71 extra beds for patients with acute mental illness in the area Northwest Community serves, according to the board.
Prior to the board meeting Tuesday, the board received one letter of opposition to Endeavor’s plan from a woman who wrote “there is a severe shortage of mental health beds across Illinois” and that the unit had saved her sons’ lives.
Endeavor acquired Northwest Community Hospital in 2021, while Endeavor was still called NorthShore University HealthSystem.
Endeavor had announced the plan earlier this year to stop offering inpatient psychiatric services at the hospital at the same time that it said it was laying off “a small number of individuals” across the health system. At the time, Endeavor, in a statement, cited “significant cost pressures and headwinds that require our organization to adapt and think differently about how we maximize our talent and resources to operate effectively and continue to deliver high-quality, expert care to our communities.”
The changes at Endeavor followed a nearly $492 million operating loss for the health system during the nine months that ended Sept. 30, with much of that attributable to $453 million in expenses to settle patients’ claims alleging one of Endeavor’s former doctors sexually abused them, Endeavor said in a financial disclosure in November.
The unaudited financial statement did not name the doctor. But Endeavor and Swedish Hospital have settled more than 75 lawsuits filed against them by former patients of gynecologist-obstetrician Dr. Fabio Ortega, accusing him of sexually abusing them while he worked at the health systems and, in many cases, accusing the health systems of failing to protect them from abuse despite being aware of complaints against the doctor. A Chicago Tribune investigation published last year described how Endeavor allowed Ortega to continue providing care despite multiple complaints from patients.
