St. Francis buyer lends life support to failing hospital
REAL ESTATE | RESUSCITATED
Just five weeks after the announcement that Blue Island's St. Francis Hospital would close for good, the city's biggest employer is getting a new owner and a new name.
St. Francis would, perhaps by this summer, morph into MetroSouth Medical Center and become a for-profit hospital owned by a New York investment group that has breathed new life into faltering nursing homes and owns a ski resort in Utah.
(Joseph P. Meier/STNG)
"It's good to know future generations will be able to be born here," Blue Island Mayor Don Peloquin said Thursday. He as well as his four children were born at St. Francis.
Falcon Investors is putting up the money to buy the hospital, but how much remains a secret until the deal closes. The hospital's current owner, SSM Health Care, used the term "transfer" rather than sale to describe the transaction. Falcon also intends to invest up to $30 million in new equipment at the hospital, including a 64-slice CT scanner.
Falcon would be the majority owner of a holding company called MSMC Investors that would own the hospital and related health care assets.
While just a few weeks ago they were facing the prospect of having to find new jobs, hundreds of employees crowded into the hospital's lobby to hear the new owners promise no jobs or salaries would be cut.
SSM said April 2 it would close the 410-bed hospital because of ongoing losses as a result of caring for a growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients. The new operators weren't saying much about how they plan to turn things around.
"We hope to have the beds as full as this lobby is," Arnold Kimmel, who would become the hospital's chief executive, said "We are confident we will be successful here."
Sun-Times Media Group
