Roseland Community Hospital administrators are calling for more state funding to keep the struggling South Side hospital afloat.

They say COVID-19 has exacerbated the hospital’s financial need, due in part to added expenses in equipment and paying overtime for health care workers.

The move comes as four other safety net hospitals have closed their doors on the South or West sides since 2018.

“We’re in financial difficulty. There’s no doubt about it even more so than we were two years ago,” said Tim Egan, president and CEO of Roseland Community Hospital. “This last round of omicron really wounded us. We’re about $6 million in debt right now to nursing agencies alone and that is crippling to us in our budget.”

Egan says the need to hire more health care workers, including nurses, earlier this year came amid the omicron surge.

“We had a shortage of nurses just like every other hospital across the United States,” Egan said. “We had to plug those holes and use nurse agencies. During the first stage of COVID, it was understandable to pay $10 or $15 more per hour for these agency nurses, but then the agencies took advantage during the omicron period, and they raised their hourly wages by almost 200% in some areas. It’s been absolutely devastating.”

As a result, the hospital has had to shut down certain programs, such as their Adolescent Behavioral Health Unit and their Sickle Cell Anemia Clinic.

In response to Gov. Pritzker’s budget proposal last month, Sen. Emil Jones, whose district encompasses Roseland, called for more investment in safety net hospitals in a statement:

Safety nets make up 19.1% of our state’s hospitals and care for our state’s most vulnerable populations. We must ensure that they are funded properly and equipped with adequate staffing and resources. I urge the governor to release the $30 million from the American Rescue Plan funding for safety net hospitals and hospital transformations.

See: Illinois Safety Net Hospitals, a report from the Illinois Health and Hospital Association

Egan says the initial federal influx of funding at the beginning of pandemic was “outstanding,” but has since gone dry, pointing to a need for state funding.

“The rest of the ARPA money is just sitting there,” Egan added. “We got some of it through COVID, but a lot of it is sitting on the sidelines. As frustrated, as angry as I am, we are forced to beg down in Springfield every spring just to keep our doors open.”

According to the hospital’s administrators, about 70% of patients are on Medicaid.

Currently, Roseland Community Hospital is hoping to secure funding through the health transformation plan signed into law by Pritzker early last year.

See the Chicago Tribune’s: South Side Hospitals Among Those Getting $94 Million to Address Inequities in Health Care

“We have had a transformation plan that’s been pending with the state of Illinois since April of last year,” Egan said. “That’s a $40 million investment over the next five years so we can expand our behavioral health services to include sustainable healing centers for adolescent patients suffering from behavioral health issues, and bring in an orthopedic surgery program … That transformation is absolutely critical for the future of Roseland Community Hospital.”