On a given day, more than two-thirds of Oak Forest Hospital's beds are empty, and about a fifth of its buildings are vacant. An entrance by the emergency room (inset) is closed. (Jean Lachat/Scott Stewart/Sun-T
Posted on 05/17/2010 8:59:10 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Cook County's 'country club' hospital
Oak Forest Hospital is virtually empty -- and far overstaffed
May 17, 2010
BY LISA DONOVAN AND ART GOLAB Staff Reporters
Cook County-owned Oak Forest Hospital is known by doctors and nurses in the public health system as the "country club."
They aren't referring just to the 340 rolling acres the hospital sits on, or the pond that beckons geese, ducks and brown-bagging staffers. » Click to enlarge image On a given day, more than two-thirds of Oak Forest Hospital's beds are empty, and about a fifth of its buildings are vacant. An entrance by the emergency room (inset) is closed. (Jean Lachat/Scott Stewart/Sun-T
The southwest suburban facility -- one of three county-owned, taxpayer-funded hospitals in Cook County -- has earned that moniker because it's staffed at a ratio nearly three times the national average, even though it's virtually empty.
On a given day, more than two-thirds of its 213 beds are empty, and 21 percent of the buildings on its hilltop campus are vacant.
Still, Oak Forest is staffed by 743 doctors, nurses and other employees tending to the 55 patients who, on average, are hospitalized there, hospital records show.
That comes to 13 staffers for each hospitalized patient -- nearly triple the national average, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of data provided by the Cook County Health and Hospitals System, which runs Oak Forest.
That's at a time the county is facing a budget crunch and the prospect of dwindling tax revenues with a partial rollback of the sales tax, due to take effect July 1.
William Foley, the chief executive of Cook County's health and hospital system, takes issue with the staff-ratio figure, though not with the conclusion that Oak Forest is overstaffed.
Foley says that, according to a hospital industry formula that takes into account full- and part-time staffing, revenues, hospitalized patients and those seeking outpatient care, his figures show a staffing ratio of 8.5 staff members per "average occupied bed."
But Foley acknowledges that, even by his calculation, "We're still high. We want to move it down. We believe it should be down in the range of six to seven staffers per patient."
That would still be higher than the national average of five staffers per patient that Foley cites as the standard.
He points to cuts already in the works -- by 1,000 staffers throughout the county hospital system in January, with another 300 cuts planned in August. But cuts need to happen in steps, Foley says.
"We're in a very public environment here," he says. "It's very political. We've got the unions, so we've got to follow certain steps. And all of that makes it very difficult."
Foley has been on the job for a year. The independent hospital board that now oversees the county hospitals has been in place for about 18 months.
That's time enough, says Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica, for those in charge to cut costs, beginning with payroll.
"What are these people doing with their time?" says Peraica, a Republican from Riverside, adding that he doesn't think there's enough work for Oak Forest staffers to do as things now stand. "I'd like to see a desk audit of how each person on the staffs spends each minute of their eight-hour day."
A key factor affecting the staffing ratio has been the precipitous drop in patient numbers at Oak Forest since 2007. That's when the long-term-care facility at Oak Forest was all but shuttered as a result of a budget crunch. More than 300 long-term-care patients were moved elsewhere, leaving just five today.
"But it looks like they haven't reduced the staff in a way that's commensurate with the number of people now using this hospital," says Peraica.
With the looming July 1 partial rollback of the sales tax, the hospital system alone is forecast to lose $26 million in revenues this year and another $76 million in 2011.
That tax rollback -- and what it would do to the county health system for the poor and uninsured -- was a flashpoint in the February primary campaign. Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, who ended up losing his re-election bid, said in December that it could force the county to close Oak Forest or Provident Hospital.
"Some people will die needlessly for lack of access to the health care our system provides today," Stroger said then.
Others argued there was ample fat to trim in the hospital system as a result of the hospital system long having been used as a place to find jobs for political supporters.
Foley's staff is winding up a yearlong study of the health system that's looking at that. A report is due next month.
"It's looking at what are the needs of our patients in that part of the county, in the southern, southwest suburbs and how can we best deliver care, recognizing it's too expensive the way we're doing it now," Foley says of Oak Forest, where operating costs were $110 million last year and which is operating at a deficit of roughly $65 million. "The numbers are just too low to support it."
One idea being floated is to turn Oak Forest Hospital -- which currently has a walk-in emergency room but doesn't accept ambulances -- into one of five urgent-care hubs in the county, also providing outpatient treatment including mammograms, colonoscopies and endoscopies.
Commissioner Joan Murphy, a Democrat whose district includes Oak Forest Hospital, says the community needs it to remain a traditional hospital. She says patient numbers are down and staffing is relatively so high in large measure because county budget cuts over the years have led to cuts in medical services, from podiatry to dentistry.
"My constituents, what they want is a full-service hospital there," she says. "What we need to do is put the services back in Oak Forest."
On a given day, more than two-thirds of Oak Forest Hospital's beds are empty, and about a fifth of its buildings are vacant. An entrance by the emergency room (inset) is closed. (Jean Lachat/Scott Stewart/Sun-T
Database of Oak Forest Hospital salaries:
898 employees
http://www.cookemployees.com/depts/oak-forest-hospital/employees
while my hospital system couldn’t afford a measly $25 gift card for its employees last Christmas, and cancelled Christmas parties and picnics last summer, it keeps adding, adding, adding to middle management...
But Il Duce Daley gets the snow plowed and the garbage picked up...nothing to see here....move.on(.org)
“Country Club”?
Looks like you typical horror show government hospital hellhole.
Veterinarian level care in a garbage dump.
I’ve always heard that this hospital served as a refuge for mobsters. When it got too hot for a senior capo, he checked into this hospital for a week or two. The mob considered the hospital as a safe zone where you couldn’t whack someone.
Can anyone else confirm/refute this story?
“I’ve always heard that this hospital served as a refuge for mobsters.”
Could be.
“Of more lasting significance was the development of the hospital. The decision to locate a poor farm in the area was made in 1907 in response to the overcrowded conditions at the County Poor Farm in Dunning on the Northwest Side of Chicago. The facility was completed in 1910 as the Oak Forest Infirmary, and accommodated close to 2,000 persons who were destitute because of poverty, mental illness, alcoholism, and other problems. Residents helped maintain farmland around the facility. By 1932, there were more than 4,000 patients, including over 500 with tuberculosis. Oak Forest Hospital continues to function today as an important part of the county’s health care system”
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/915.html
This wouldn’t be the hospital that Shelly Obama “worked” in, would it?
Michelle Obama worked for the U of Chicago Hospital.
Chart: Michelle Obama's Salary
Below you'll find a helpful chart and timeline explaining Michelle Obama's ultra-critical position at the University of Chicago Hospital (UCH), a position coincidentally created just after her husband's election to the Senate... and dissolved just minutes after she resigned to move into the White House.
Sandwiched, of course, by Sen. Obama's $1M earmark to UCH.
In 2002, Michelle Obama was hired by the University of Chicago Hospital as its "Executive Director for Community Affairs" at a salary of approximately $120,000.
In January of 2005, Barack Obama was sworn in as a United States Senator.
In March of 2005, Michelle Obama was promoted to "Vice President for Community and External Affairs" and her salary bumped nearly $200,000 (from $121,910 to $316,962). This position was "newly created" for Mrs. Obama.
In February of 2006, Barack Obama requested a $1 million earmark for a new hospital pavilion at the University of Chicago.
Effective 9 January 2009, Michelle Obama resigned her position at UCH.
Effective 14 January 2009, Michelle Obama's VP position was eliminated, its functions absorbed into another executive's position. This prompted writer Don Rose to ask "[If] that work can be folded into another guy’s, why was it separate in the first place?"
Excellent question. Some roguish wags might speculate that a quid pro quo arrangement was in effect; pay-to-play as it were. But that seems highly unlikely given Barack Obama's high ethical standards *.
* Ignoring, of course, Auchi, Ayers, Blagojevich, Jarrett, Jones, Rezko, etc. 
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