Join John Skosey, former UI Health Rheumatologist and author (and father of Peter Skosey, MUPP, and founder of the CUPPA Alumni Board) for a discussion about his new book "The Battle of 1989 to Save the University of Illinois Hospital".

It’s winter, 1989. Imagine the devastating effects on Chicago if the University of Illinois Hospital was to disappear. A medical care resource that had served countless numbers since 1919 would be gone. The health care statistics of Chicago’s west side, already the worst in the city and state, would worsen. The primary teaching hospital of the country’s largest medical school would be lost. Growth and development of Chicago’s West Side would be stifled.

It almost happened when the President of the University unveiled a plan to give the hospital to Cook County and outsource medical education to Michael Reese Hospital.

It took six months for a determined coalition of physicians, nurses, hospital staff, and community activists to defeat the plan, leaving the hospital crippled and the medical school in disarray. But it gave the University a mandate to restructure the University of Illinois Hospital, and to completely revitalize the College of Medicine.

The worst-laid schemes of mice and men go sometimes aright.