Reopening West Suburban Medical Center could take at least nine months, a hospital administration expert warned at a community forum Monday, Oct. 5.

More than six months after the Oak Park hospital closed without warning, residents and state lawmakers gathered in a crowded church basement to confront the financial and regulatory obstacles standing in the way. Senate President Don Harmon and Assistant House Majority Leader Camille Lilly hosted the 90-minute forum at Rising Sun Missionary Baptist Church, 820 N. Central Ave., Chicago. Deputy Governor Grace Hou also attended.

The Wednesday Journal reported the meeting drew a large crowd from Oak Park, Austin and the surrounding West Side.

West Suburban closed March 25. It had employed more than 700 people and served tens of thousands of patients a year, according to ABC7 Chicago. Harmon told the forum the hospital was Oak Park's single largest employer when he was first elected to the state senate.

Irving Sawyer, who said he spent 40 years in hospital administration, warned the crowd that regaining Medicare certification after a closure is not quick. "You won't get it back in anything less than nine months," Sawyer said.

The hospital's operations were sold to Insight Health Systems in mid-September after landlord Reddy Rathnaker Patlola bought out his business partner, Manoj Prasad, in a court settlement reported by the Chicago Tribune. Insight is now in a 90-day due-diligence period to assess whether reopening is feasible, an Insight spokesperson told the Tribune.

Harmon said the hospital's prior private owners still owe the state $20 million in loans and $104 million in back taxes. He acknowledged the state bore some responsibility for the hospital's decline.

"The State of Illinois has some culpability here. We oversaw this hospital … So maybe we hoped against hope too long," Harmon said.

Attorney James Hammonds told the forum that state regulators failed to require Prasad and Patlola to show their plans or prove they had the financial means to run the hospital when they were approved to buy it.

Neither Harmon nor Lilly named Insight during the public session. But afterward, Harmon told the Tribune he has "great reservations about Insight based on their track record both in Illinois and other states." Insight already owes the state $48 million in loans for its Bronzeville hospital, formerly Mercy Hospital, and closed a hospital it owned in Ohio in late 2025, the Tribune reported.

Community members described the closure's human cost. Clabe Johnson said his mother suffered a seizure and waited 20 minutes for an ambulance, then another 20 minutes to reach Rush Oak Park Hospital. Pastor Dwight Gunn cited statistics showing that for every five blocks a patient travels by ambulance, the chance of surviving a critical incident drops 1%. With West Suburban closed, many West Side residents now travel 34 blocks for emergency care.

An Insight spokesperson said the company has made no predictions on whether the hospitals would be viable to reopen, citing a lack of state financial support and federal pressures on safety-net hospitals. Any ownership change must still be approved by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board.

Insight's 90-day due-diligence period runs through approximately mid-December.