Maryville Academy Seeks To Close Hospital
DES PLAINES, Ill. (CBS) -- Maryville Academy is taking steps to close its psychiatric hospital in northwest suburban Des Plaines.
Maryville will ask the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board for permission to close its Behavioral Health Hospital, which provides inpatient psychiatric care to children and adolescents.
"It is with sadness that we must ask to close the hospital," said Sister Catherine M. Ryan, executive director of Maryville Academy. "But the hospital has been losing money for years, including $4 million last year, and more than $3 million thus far this fiscal year."
Maryville Academy is a Catholic-run home for troubled youth. The move to shutter its hospital comes less than two weeks after its nurses staged a five-day strike to protest working conditions at the facility.
Maryville had been using reserve funds to keep up proper staffing levels, but Ryan said it cannot continue to do so.
"Continuing to operate a hospital at this level of deficit puts our family preservation and child welfare programs at risk," she said.
Maryville will file a formal request to close the hospital next week, and hopes to complete the process by June. It will continue treating patients in the meantime.
Maryville plans to transform the hospital into a community center for troubled children and their families.
