Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital rallied outside the hospital Thursday in a planned one-day strike after they allege nurses were fired by management in retaliation for trying to form a union. The hospital denied retaliating against employees.

Lawmakers said the owner of Weiss Memorial Hospital filed to appeal Medicaid funding cuts that led to the hospital’s closure last month.

Federal funding cuts and allegations of mismanagement prompted the closures of most operations at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown, while Oak Park’s West Suburban Medical Center is facing a similar fate.

“We started this program with a simple premise: In a healthy and functioning society, no one should fall into financial ruin simply because they got sick,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said during a news conference announcing the latest round of medical debt relief.

Hospitals in parts of the state are facing a critical shortage of available beds in their intensive care units. The highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19, combined with low vaccination rates, has created an overwhelming situation for medical providers for the last month.

The latest surge in coronavirus cases is overwhelming many intensive care units, causing hospitals and states to run out of ICU beds in some locations. A maxed-out ICU can become a staffing and logistical nightmare.

The site of the long-defunct hospital is poised to be transformed into a new Chicago neighborhood offering 4,800 homes, plus offices, research facilities and stores as part of a $4 billion redevelopment. “This has been a long time coming,” said Ald. Sophia King.

The Chicago Plan Commission approved a $3.8 billion effort earlier this year to overhaul the former Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville, just west of the lakefront on 31st Street. The team behind the development is thinking big and working toward community buy-in.

Health care workers have been front-row witnesses to tragedy, as they’ve seen patients get sick and die from COVID-19, but also hope, as they help patients recover. What does the future of that treatment look like? 

This time last year, hospitals were bracing for the unknown as COVID-19 accelerated its spread across the U.S. We got an exclusive look inside Illinois’ largest private health system as hospital professionals reflect on a year unlike any other.

Hospitals don’t just offer health care. Many offer care for the human spirit as well as the human body. We talk with a chaplain at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park about the challenges of ministering to patients and families during a pandemic.

Chicago and suburban Cook, Lake, Kane, McHenry and DuPage counties moved Monday from Tier 3 to Tier 2 after the Illinois Department of Public Health launched a new plan to add hospital staff and beds where the need is greatest.

Success rates for organ transplantation have grown through the years, but disparities impacting communities of color remain. A Northwestern Medicine transplant surgeon is providing care curated specifically for the Latino community.

South Side residents have reason to hope that Mercy Hospital could yet be saved from closure. We speak with three people who are fighting to keep the city’s oldest hospital open.

The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.

Doctors and nurses around the U.S. are becoming exhausted and demoralized as they struggle to cope with a record-breaking surge of COVID-19 patients that is overwhelming hospitals and prompting governors to clamp back down to contain the virus.