“To close a health care facility in the middle of a pandemic is outright telling me you do not care about Black folks, brown folks, disenfranchised folks finding access to health care,” Harris said.
A $1.1 billion plan announced in March called for the merger of Mercy, South Shore Hospital, Advocate Trinity Hospital and St. Bernard Hospital. The plan, later scrapped, included the construction of one a hospital and a network of community health centers. One or more of the hospitals would have been closed under the plan.
The hospitals asked the Legislature for $110 million for fiscal year 2021 and a total of $520 million over five years to offset losses as they created the system and built a hospital. The remainder of the money was to come from the hospitals, their parent organizations and donations. Lawmakers did not include the money, which would have come from Medicaid funds, in legislation passed after the request.
Mercy dates to 1852, when a rooming house was converted into a hospital by the Sisters of Mercy. It survived the Chicago Fire of 1871.
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