Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

Hanging on by a thread, safety-net hospitals brace for new blows

suntimes.com · 5h · first reportShare

Last month, two of the six people who were wounded in a mass shooting in Humboldt Park were treated at Mount Sinai Hospital. Mount Sinai was also one of eight Chicago Hospitals flagged in a recent report by Public Citizen as being at high risk of closing under upcoming Medicaid cuts. Writing in as a medical student and orthopedic trauma surgeon at the University of Chicago, we know from our own history that the city doesn't have to imagine the impacts of one of its major trauma centers closing. When U. of C. closed its adult trauma center in 1988 , the South Side went nearly 30 years without one. People died on longer ambulance rides to hospitals up north. It took years of organizing by residents who had buried loved ones and neighbors to get a trauma center finally reopened in 2018 . Our trauma center treats roughly 1,200 gunshot survivors a year, and nearly 1 in 3 of those survivors will lose their insurance within a year of their injury . Without insurance to allow for follow-up car