‘Crook’ County’s ‘country club’ hospital Pouring Money Down the Drain
Crook country throwing good money after bad at a hospital which must be one of the very few in this country that are practically empty for reasons not really explained in the article or perhaps not even understood other than a lower than average illegal alien population in the immediate vicinity. Regardless of the reasons with the city and state bankrupt like everyone else, perhaps finding a new use for it might be in order.
Or they may just be in a holding pattern awaiting the flood of patients when Obamacare green lights and goes into full swing, awaiting the inevitable flood of people start to pour in the doors for their “free healthcare” in an upside down society today where nothing is free unless you’re a minority or an illegal US citizen, then you get more than the legal population for free while we non members pay the bills.
Only in America.
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
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.
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 w
continued at CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: The Watchdogs.
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