Oak Forest Hospital of Cook County is a 600+ bed hospital located in south suburban Oak Forest, Illinois. It specializes in long-term care, ventilator care, chronic disease and rehabilitation services. It is part of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, which also includes the more prominent and newer John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County.
Until recently, uninsured patients from other hospitals in Cook County requiring sub-acute, chronic, long term, ventilator care, or rehabilitation were sent to Oak Forest Hospital as an alternative to remaining in acute hospitals such as John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County or Provident Hospital - Chicago or going to nursing homes.
Many services and facilities at Oak Forest Hospital have been cut or closed down recently, including long-term care units, some rehabilitation services, and conveniences such as the hospital's cafeteria. As a result, patients who lived in the long-term care units were placed to lower-quality nursing facilities.
Historical Role of State and County Government in Providing Care to the Indigent in Illinois
First Facility In Cook County
The Chicago State Hospital was the only large-scale facility available in Cook County, Illinois to address a variety of longer-term health-related needs of the poor when its doors opened in 1854. Early on the facility, located in Dunning, became known in conversation as the Dunning Insane Asylum or simply "Dunning", most likely referenced this way due to the name of the train station near the facility.
Although the facility began as a poor farm or almshouse, eventually it began to accept people considered to be mentally ill in some fashion, as well as other biological-based diseases.
History of Abuse, Neglect and Corruption Under County Supervision at Dunning
By 1874, the Chicago Tribune published a story about abuse, neglect and government corruption with the facility. In an 1886 state investigation, one of the sedatives used at Dunning was a mixture containing chloral hydrate as well as cannabis, hops and potash. The investigation also found that Dunning was apparently serving two kegs of beer daily to both patients and employees. A lack of fruit and fresh vegetables had caused an epidemic of scurvy;About 200 patients had the illness, according to the same investigation. "The cooking, we are convinced, was bad," the investigators said.
By the early 1900s, the reputation of the Dunning facility was riddled with horror stories and legal battles appearing in the newspapers and amongst the general public.
With the arc of awareness of such matters growing outward as a result of the telegraph industry being forced to fight for its relevance against the telephone companies, Cook County eventually determined it was time to build another facility to handle the growing number of indigents unable to afford private health care.
State Take-Over of Dunning Facility in Exchange for Oak Forest Infirmary
In 1911, an agreement was reached between the State of Illinois and Cook County in which the County surrendered all assets and liabilities associated with the Dunning facility and at the same time, the county was leaving all residents deemed to be insane at the Dunning facility while transferring the remaining residents to what was to become the Oak Forest Hospital facility by July 1, 1911, which would remain under the supervision of Cook County officials and employees.
This agreement was in some ways more of a formality since Cook County had already called for bids and the facility was fairly complete, both in construction and in an operational manner in 1910.
The Initial Development Years
Cook County Initiates Development of Oak Forest Infirmary in 1907
While the State was busy engaging in activities that would eventually lead the facility into better patient living conditions over the next few years at the Dunning facility, the County seemed determined to stay its course of suspicious politics and questionable decisions. Many people in both large and small communities had a low tolerance level for a number of ailments, with issues such as poverty being viewed as "proof" someone must be "sick" in order to live such a way. Definitions of compassion ranged from providing for fresh air in the architecture design while others were busy practicing some form of eugenics to speed the process of biological death.