Chicago Hospital Cuts Services but Nurses’ Strike Is Averted

Threatened with a strike by its nurses, Cook County Hospital, metropolitan Chicago’s primary medical facility for the poor, virtually closed its emergency room to serious cases Friday, canceled elective surgery and began transfering babies to other hospitals.

But after a day of negotiations, both sides announced a tentative settlement, and a vote was scheduled for Tuesday. A spokesman for the hospital’s 1,500 nurses said a yes vote would be recommended.

Earlier, some doctors said they would honor any picket lines established by the nurses.

“We are the most important hospital to the under-insured and the uninsured population in Chicago,” said Wanda Robertson, the hospital’s director of public affairs.

Cook County, with 1,118 beds, admitted 38,000 patients last year and provided emergency room and clinic care for almost 600,000 other patients in 1987.

Meanwhile, despite the tentative settlement, hospitals throughout Chicago braced for the weekend, normally the busiest time at Cook County’s giant emergency room, where victims of street violence and traffic accidents roll in at the rate of 200 a day.

The University of Illinois’ medical center, adjacent to the Cook County Hospital complex, Friday invited would-be Cook patients to use its facilities while at least three other hospitals accepted seriously ill babies from Cook.