Like many in our region, I am concerned about and disappointed with the recent actions by Mercyhealth CEO Javon Bea to reduce the services his organization offers in our community.

In the midst of a global pandemic and a U.S. economic recession, our health systems should be the calm in the storm. They should be saying, “What can we do to help the community?” Instead, Mercyhealth seems to be asking “What can we do to help ourselves and our bottom line?”

In recent months, Mercyhealth has:

• Chosen to eliminate Medicaid coverage to thousands of our community’s most vulnerable residents.

• Closed the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit after promoting its new facility on Riverside as a “women’s and children’s hospital.”

• Continued pursuing a $30 million lawsuit against the taxpayers of the city of Rockford for water damage to its campus during a storm in 2018.

• Announced it will drastically cut emergency department services at its North Rockton Avenue campus, the only emergency room on Rockford’s west side.

• Closed the inpatient mental health care unit on North Rockton Avenue last week, prior to a scheduled public hearing in September and without state of Illinois approval, at a time when a lack of mental health care is at crisis levels in our community.

Mercyhealth has been vocal about the financial challenges it faces because of the pandemic. Yet, following its merger with Rockford Health System in 2015, it used $100 million from the Rockford Memorial Development Foundation endowment and near record-low interest rates to finance construction of the new Riverside hospital. In a development agreement for the new hospital in 2016, the city of Rockford provided sales tax rebates and fee waivers to help Mercyhealth construct the facility, money that unfortunately cannot be clawed back under the terms of the contract.

Mercyhealth pays Javon Bea more than $10 million a year as CEO, compensates several board members, and employs at least 12 vice presidents making more than $200,000 a year, six making more than $350,000 annually and three making more than $500,000. Those are salary levels not seen in many Fortune 500 companies and seem to fly directly in the face of the “nonprofit” status of the organization.

Mercyhealth’s closure of its mental health unit prompted this response from the northern Illinois branch of the National Alliance for Mental Illness: “Our community already has a hard enough time serving those with acute mental illness. People are sent to other cities often to be hospitalized and cared for. A psychiatric unit for someone with an acute mental illness is the equivalent to an ICU for a person in heart failure. Until there is more time and energy put towards other avenues of care, prevention and early intervention, our city and our county NEED those beds.”

Indeed, we do. And, we need Mercyhealth to honor its responsibility to the community. It’s easy to eliminate services from the comfort of a boardroom as you study a spreadsheet full of numbers. However, those numbers are our friends, neighbors and co-workers, not to mention some of the most vulnerable in our community who often cannot speak for themselves. I share the frustration of so many that more action cannot be taken to remedy these decisions by Javon Bea and his team which seem to put profits ahead of people.

Despite these challenges, I am heartened by the fact that Rockford has thousands of incredibly talented and dedicated people working at all three health systems, as well as those who provide care at Crusader Clinic, which is currently building a new clinic and administration building on West State Street, and many independent and specialty practices. To all our health care workers, I say thank you on behalf of our residents. Your commitment to keeping us healthy and safe in the midst of a pandemic is admirable and will never be forgotten.

Thomas P. McNamara is mayor of Rockford