Mercy Hospital and Medical Center’s new owner will invest $50 million in the next two years as it works to rebuild a facility once slated for shutdown, Bloomberg News reported. Insight, which took over June 1, will create a “comprehensive plan to increase services and meet community need,” a representative said in an email Wednesday. It will also appoint three independent community board members within 90 days and restore a full emergency department. Insight last week said it also intends to revive Mercy’s status as a teaching hospital as part of a plan to operate Mercy as a full-service hospital “through 2029 and beyond.” The survival of Chicago’s oldest hospital was by no means assured. Its troubles, including a poorer, sicker population that lacked private insurance, predated the pandemic. The higher costs and halting of more profitable elective procedures due to COVID-19 further strained U.S. hospitals and heightened the disparity between those struggling to stay solvent and larger and more affluent systems.
