No ER in La Salle-Peru concerns state Sen. Sue Rezin, but she sees better days soon

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, updated a La Salle County Board committee on the status of reopening a hospital in Peru, including comments about how first responders are adapting to issues in the interim.

The state senator is hopeful the La Salle-Peru region can get through the next couple of months without any major issues as a result of not having an emergency room, but she said it remains a concern.

“There was a couple of situations where they had no beds in the hospital, so the patient had to stay in the ambulance until there was room in the hospital. We don’t want that. That’s been our concern all summer.”

—  State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris

OSF received approval July 27 for a change of ownership at the Peru hospital from the Illinois Health and Services Review Board, Rezin told the La Salle County Committee on Appointment and Legislation and Rules on Aug. 7. OSF officials have pledged to reopen the Peru hospital as quickly as possible, but have said the next step is acquiring the asset from St. Margaret’s, which includes factors outside of OSF’s control. Knowing what’s still ahead, Rezin believes it will be another couple of months before the hospital can begin reopening.

“I believe once OSF opens up, we will be regionally better off than we were,” Rezin said. " ... We have seen with what happened here that the whole ecosystem of rural health care is very fragile. ... We need to make sure regionally we have the services we need, so we aren’t going to Peoria, or Morris, or way up where to get the services we need. That’s what OSF is working on.”

St. Margaret’s closed its Peru hospital on Jan. 28 and its Spring Valley hospital on June 16, leaving western La Salle and eastern Bureau counties without an emergency room. St. Margaret’s had announced the closures citing financial strains common among rural hospitals, which were worsened by the pandemic and the resulting shortage of healthcare workers, as well as a computer hack that crippled billing.

Rezin said her concern this summer is the availability of emergency care and the potential of overcrowding at Ottawa’s OSF St. Elizabeth Medical Center. She said first responders in the area have met about having enough coverage and the availability of beds in Ottawa’s hospital.

“There was a couple of situations where they had no beds in the hospital, so the patient had to stay in the ambulance until there was room in the hospital,” Rezin said. “We don’t want that. That’s been our concern all summer.”

Rezin said first responders have been good about adapting and handling the issue in the interim.

“If we get the new system open, we can all feel a little bit better having gone through probably the worst scenario, health care crisis in the state,” Rezin said.

Rezin was asked at the committee meeting about the status of Spring Valley’s hospital and she said she’s not heard anything official she would feel comfortable commenting on.

“I feel that having a hospital that has the services needed in a region is best,” Rezin said. “We don’t need two hospitals next to each other providing very expensive services right next to each other, literally 5 miles apart.”

Rezin said she and state Rep. Lance Yednock, D-Ottawa, first helped St. Margaret’s gain a special designation to operate emergency rooms in two separate counties, then the lawmakers helped the Peru hospital to gain Rural Emergency Hospital status. Rezin said St. Margaret’s, along with other hospitals, received an additional $1 million after COVID-19 to help them after the pandemic.

Additionally, Rezin said Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration agreed to pay the payroll to keep St. Margaret’s open until OSF could reopen Peru’s hospital, but the administration said it wasn’t going to pay for any of St. Margaret’s debts.

“Unfortunately, the money was swept away by a predator, so the governor’s administration saw that, and pulled their agreement and rightfully so,” Rezin said. “We had that conversation. There was a lot of negotiations to get the admin to come in and do something they’ve never done. Millions of dollars a week.”

Rezin and Yednock released a joint statement the day Spring Valley’s hospital closed about the deal going south.

“The administration and leadership did not feel confident that SMH would utilize state funding for payroll needs,” the lawmakers said in the statement. “This skepticism unfortunately appears to have been warranted after the advanced payment, which we were assured would be used for payroll, was used to pay off debts owed to their financial bank.”

Rezin was asked by a committee member if the state is looking at ways to prevent similar scenarios as Peru and Spring Valley’s hospitals closing from playing out in the future. The senator said the challenge is hospitals are run by private entities and businesses, which limits the regulations the state can levy.

“I don’t know that there is an entity set up to look at it,” Rezin said. “I do feel that it’s important that we look at what happened and do a deep dive, hold people accountable if you need to, but learn from our mistakes, because rural hospitals are struggling, there’s no question.

“This was more than that. We have rural hospitals in this area and on the other side of my district, they’re struggling, but they’re making the right decisions, and they’re still open. How did this go south so fast from the public’s perspective? Now that I found out a little bit more, this had been going on for a year or so, but no one knew about it.”

Rezin said OSF is unsure of the specific services it will offer in Peru, but she said the hospital chain has consultants looking at where best to put services to fit the region’s needs.

“We want ER coverage in Peru, because that’s a health care island,” Rezin said. “It’s an island, it’s a desert. We need ER. We OB/GYN for labor and delivery. That island is so far for people to travel.”