Kadner: Another patient pays for Oak Forest closing

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Mayberry

Updated: February 6, 2012 9:30AM

Lee Mayberry telephoned to tell me that Cynthia Phillips had died.

Phillips, in her mid-50s, had been among the long-term patients at Cook County’s Oak Forest Hospital before it closed.

She appeared at several public hearings and once rolled up to a news conference, protesting the hospital’s closure in her wheelchair.

“We are one of the richest countries in the world,” Phillips told me at that time, “but we treat people like we are one of the poorest.”

Mayberry, who is going blind and has been an outpatient at Oak Forest Hospital for years, is a self-appointed spokesman for the group of more than a dozen long-term patients who were forced to leave the hospital in its final weeks.

A Lansing resident and former hospital employee, Mayberry has taken it upon himself to notify the public when the long-term patients die.

“She knew the closing of Oak Forest would be a death sentence for her,” Mayberry said of Phillips. “She predicted it would happen.

“I called the county to tell them she had died, and a woman there told me, ‘Well, she was sick.’ Yes, she was sick, but I believe she would still be alive if she had been at a place where she could get quality care.”

Cook County does not keep track of the long-term patients who were forced out of the hospital, primarily to private nursing homes.

Mayberry said he believes only two of the last 14 to be transferred out of Oak Forest remain alive today.

Many other patients were encouraged to leave before the hospital officially closed its doors.

Cook County closed the hospital and converted it into an immediate care facility available to outpatients only last year.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle estimated the cost savings at about $20 million a year.

“I realize the hospital couldn’t be kept open just to serve the needs of those dozen or so long-term-care patients,” Mayberry said. “But it was needed to serve the uninsured of the south suburbs.

“What they do now, if you have a major medical problem and go to Oak Forest, is put you in an ambulance and take you to Stroger Hospital in Chicago.

“I may be losing my sight, but until I go blind I will continue to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. I will continue to remind people about the cost of closing Oak Forest Hospital.

“Those long-term-care patients are all dying, and no one wants to think about why that is. They’re dying because they were forced out of a facility that used to care for them. They died so that people could save a half-cent on their sales tax in Cook County.”

Although many health care experts and good-government types claimed that Oak Forest Hospital’s budget was padded with patronage employees, there’s no doubt that a taxpayer rebellion against a one-cent sales tax increase in Cook County resulted in a large budget hole that needed to be plugged.

Three-quarters of that sales tax hike has been repealed, and Preckwinkle has vowed to eliminate the rest of it as of Jan. 1, 2013.

Preckwinkle also has cited a report by the independent Cook County Health and Hospital Systems Board to close Oak Forest Hospital in defending her position.

But most of the people on that board were Chicagoans who favor Stroger Hospital and had little empathy for the poor of the Southland.

Like many who knew little about Oak Forest Hospital, I initially considered it a waste of tax money.
But as I came to know the patients and some of the staff there, I
realized that it served a useful purpose.

That purpose, however, had been subverted by politicians who padded the payroll while cutting medical services. Despite their best efforts to hamstring the facility and undermine its effectiveness, it was still saving lives and helping the poor.

It could have done more with proper oversight and a greater emphasis on quality of care.

Instead, the political system that had spent decades eroding Oak Forest Hospital’s foundation used its corruption and ineptitude as an excuse to close the doors.

And good-government groups and downtown editorial page editors said “good riddance.”

“The people whose lives depended on Oak Forest deserved better,” Mayberry said. “This fight is not over as far as I’m concerned.

“I’m going to remind the public every time one of those patients dies. These people were considered expendable because they were poor.

“Their lives didn’t matter. They didn’t count.

“That’s simply wrong. And I will say that until I no longer have a voice.”