Silver Cross Tells County Board It Delivered $62 Million in Community Benefit

Will County Board | September 17, 2026

Article Summary: Silver Cross Hospital’s president and chief executive and its senior vice president for external affairs told the Will County Board on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, that the independent New Lenox hospital delivered $62 million in community benefit in fiscal year 2025 — roughly five times the $12 million it estimates it would owe in property taxes — generates a $1.3 billion annual economic impact, and is about 40 beds and $100 million short of what its emergency department needs.

Silver Cross Hospital Presentation Key Points:

FY2025 community benefit totaled $62 million, including $6,063,000 in charity care at cost and $22,854,000 in unreimbursed Medicaid, against an estimated $12 million annual property tax liability offset by the hospital’s exemption.

The hospital reported a 2026 economic impact of $1.3 billion, with $543,911,967 in payroll, $650,910,465 in supplies and services and $86,632,661 in capital, supporting 5,766 jobs — 2,231 direct and 3,535 indirect — as the county’s third-largest employer.

President and CEO Michael Mutterer said the hospital needs about 40 more beds but is “about $100 million short,” and that its emergency department is overcrowded daily.

The hospital’s four stated legislative priorities are protecting the not-for-profit property tax exemption, addressing workforce challenges including workplace violence, avoiding mandated nurse staffing ratios, and reducing insurance denials and delays.

WILL COUNTY — Leaders of Silver Cross Hospital told the Will County Board on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, that the New Lenox hospital returned $62 million in community benefit to the region in fiscal year 2025, several times what it would owe in property taxes, and used the appearance to press the board on a set of legislative fights playing out in Springfield.

The presentation, listed on the agenda as item 26-5466 under new business, was delivered by Michael Mutterer, RN, MA, LCPC, CADC, LNHA, president and chief executive officer, and Scott Paddock, senior vice president for external affairs.

Mutterer said Silver Cross is a not-for-profit hospital with an independent board of directors that opened in 1895 and has served the Joliet area for 130 years, and that its 348-bed replacement hospital opened in 2012. It serves Will, Grundy and southwest Cook counties with more than 1,000 physicians, 3,000 employees and 400 volunteers, according to the presentation. The hospital operates a Level II trauma-designated emergency department and is the resource hospital for the local emergency medical services system.

“We are Will County’s only level three perinatal center, which includes our 24-bed NICU,” Mutterer said, referring to the neonatal intensive care unit, which the presentation identified as the county’s first and only such unit. He said the hospital’s EMS program trains “a couple of hundred paramedics every single year,” works with Region 7 administrators and partners with the fire departments and ambulance services listed in the presentation — among them Crete Township, Frankfort, Manhattan, Mokena, Monee and New Lenox fire agencies.

Mutterer said the hospital is a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services five-star facility, has received a Leapfrog A grade 22 consecutive times, and was ranked the number one hospital in Illinois for surgical care in both 2024 and 2025. “Silver Cross outperformed every other hospital in the state of Illinois and it is right here in Will County,” he said. “It’s not about the awards. It’s about the quality of care and the outcomes.”

Partnerships and Market Position

Mutterer credited his predecessors with a strategy of partnering rather than competing: “If we couldn’t create or be the best, we would partner with the best.”

He named Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, which provides the hospital’s 24-hour neonatal and pediatric hospitalists; UChicago Medicine for cancer care; Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, which runs its inpatient rehabilitation facility and outpatient rehab clinics; Rush University Medical Center for its thoracic program; and US HealthVest, with which it opened the Silver Oaks Behavioral Hospital on its campus. “That is a very unique blend of partnerships for a hospital to be able to partner with several different academic medical centers,” he said, “and I’m going to say still all like each other.”

Mutterer said the hospital’s primary service area includes Crest Hill, Elwood, Frankfort, Joliet, Lemont, Lockport, Manhattan, Mokena, New Lenox, Orland Park and Homer Glen, with a secondary market growing eastward around a facility on LaGrange Road in Orland Park. The presentation put the hospital’s inpatient market share in the primary area at 46.0% for calendar year 2025, up from 39.5% in 2018, with its nearest competitor at 18.8%.

The hospital reported a 2026 economic impact of $1.3 billion annually infused into local economies, consisting of $543,911,967 in payroll, $650,910,465 in supplies and services and $86,632,661 in capital. It attributed 5,766 jobs to the hospital — 2,231 direct and 3,535 indirect — and said every dollar it spends generates an additional $1.40 in state and local spending. Mutterer said Silver Cross is the third largest employer in Will County.

He also volunteered the hospital’s weak point. “Every emergency department in the country struggles with overcrowding. We are working constantly to figure that out,” he said. “Unfortunately I probably need about 40 more beds at Silver Cross Hospital, but I’m about $100 million short. So anybody in the room that could help focus any funds that way, we will graciously continue to build on.”

The Tax Exemption Case

Paddock used the bulk of his time on community benefit, the test that governs the hospital’s property tax exemption, and opened on ownership.

“Michael and I get asked all the time, who owns Silver Cross Hospital? You own us. The community owns us,” Paddock said. “We’re not backed by private equity. We’re not part of a large system. We don’t have shareholders.” He said the medical staff and board intend to “stay the course as an independent community hospital,” adding, “we’re in some service lines that aren’t overly profitable, but this is our job. We don’t pick and choose.”

He said the Illinois General Assembly codified Senate Bill 2194, which provides a property tax exemption for not-for-profit hospitals whose qualified services and activities equal or exceed their estimated property tax liability, and that hospitals meeting the test are also exempt from state sales and use tax.

“We estimate our property taxes annually would be about $12 million. So we need to meet or exceed that threshold,” Paddock said. “In fiscal year 2025 we delivered $62 million, or five times what the state requires.”

The FY2025 figures in the presentation list $6,063,000 in charity care at cost and $22,854,000 in unreimbursed Medicaid — what Paddock called “nearly $30 million” — plus $21,340,000 in unreimbursed Medicare, $6,367,000 in bad debt at cost, $2,957,881 in volunteer services, $1,825,118 in subsidized health services, $674,065 in education, $300,334 in donations, $196,170 in language assistance and $114,300 in other benefits. The presentation also states that 27% of all emergency room patients are underinsured or on public aid, and that 40% of non-emergent patients treated in 2025 were uninsured or on public aid.

Paddock said the hospital must file a community benefit report annually with the Illinois attorney general’s office by March 31, include a community benefit plan in its IRS Form 990 filings, and post the report publicly. “If we did not have that property tax exemption, we’d be swimming in red ink and we would be closing services and closing units,” he said, noting national headlines questioning non-profit hospitals’ tax status and acknowledging “a couple of bad actors out there.” He added: “We appreciate the state, and candidly the county, recognizing that.”

He said Silver Cross participates in the Mobilizing for Action Through Partnerships and Planning collaborative, established in 2008 by the Will County Health Department, which completes a community health needs assessment every three years. The most recent assessment, completed a few months ago, identified four priorities: chronic conditions management and physical inactivity, including lung disease, heart disease and diabetes; maternal and child health; healthy food access and intake; and gaps in behavioral health and social isolation. The hospital is now writing its 2026-2028 community benefit implementation plan, due by the end of calendar year 2026.

Paddock described concrete responses: training emergency department physicians to recognize postpartum symptoms and connect patients back to their obstetricians; equipping caregivers with iPads for live interpretation; and screening every patient for social determinants of health, including food insecurity, with a food bank partnership that lets patients order groceries online for home delivery. On behavioral health, he said capacity at Silver Oaks was increased in recent years and runs at 100% occupancy most days.

East Side Commitments

Mutterer said the Silver Cross Healthy Community Commission, created in 2008, has issued about $3.7 million in scholarships and grants to people living and working in specific ZIP codes on Joliet’s east side. He credited former CEO Ruth Colby with keeping the hospital connected to the east side after the new hospital was announced, and noted that a “Reverend Brooks” serves on the commission.

The hospital’s former Joliet campus now hosts a recently opened Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic, Aunt Martha’s, and Hope Manor Joliet and Hope Manor Village, built in partnership with Volunteers of America. Mutterer said the newest Hope Manor building will open soon and will support women in treatment for opioid addiction who have children.

Legislative Priorities

Mutterer, who serves on the Illinois Health and Hospital Association board of directors, listed four priorities for 2026 and early 2027: protecting the not-for-profit hospital tax exemption; addressing workforce challenges through a health care workforce task force, identified in the presentation as SB 593; avoiding mandated nurse staffing ratios; and reducing insurance denials and delays through managed care organization reform.

He said workplace violence is part of the workforce problem. “It’s sad to see almost every single day somebody at Silver Cross is assaulted by a patient or family member,” he said.

On staffing ratios, Mutterer — a registered nurse of 25 years, a former chief nursing officer, a Joliet Junior College graduate and a Lemont resident of 26 years — argued acuity-based staffing works better. “It sounds amazing, right?” he said. “But what I will tell you as a hospital administrator, as a nurse, as a former chief nursing officer, ratios do not work.” He said a nurse assigned one-to-one or two-to-one to a trauma patient could not also handle six or seven patients awaiting discharge, and that under fixed ratios he “would have to at some point probably close my ED during lots of periods of time through the day.”

On insurance, he said companies “still dictate care,” and that delays in authorizing transfers to skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation or home health keep patients in beds after they are ready to move. “That patient that’s staying a day or two or three longer waiting for that insurance company to either accept or deny that transition — we can’t get somebody from the emergency department up to that bed because it’s being clogged up,” he said. “We fight with insurance companies every single day.”

Revis thanked the presenters and told the Joliet Junior College political science students seated in the room that Mutterer was a graduate of their school. “You guys are at one of the best learning institutions in the country,” he said. No action was taken on the presentation.