Four nurses sue Ascension and Prime Healthcare in Will County, citing 'intentional infliction of severe emotional distress' from chronic understaffing at St. Joe's Joliet

JOLIET, Ill. —

A Chicago law firm filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in Will County on behalf of four past and present nurses at St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, naming the hospital’s current owner Prime Healthcare Services and previous owner Ascension Healthcare as co-defendants. The 21-page filing alleges “intentional infliction of severe emotional distress” and “willful and wanton conduct” through chronic understaffing that violates Illinois’s Nurse Staffing By Patient Acuity Act.

The plaintiffs are senior RNs Cathy Wolff (still employed, more than 20 years at the hospital), Mary Sue Bulger (still employed), Paula Koranda (formerly employed at St. Joe’s for 52 years), and Cindy Poe (formerly employed, transferred from Resurrection Hospital in Chicago in early 2023 and resigned in July 2024). Attorney Thomas Geoghegan of Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan brought the case.

The lawsuit centres on three claims about staffing-mix mechanics. First, the dialysis unit where Wolff works has been routinely run with only two RNs — Wolff and Melody Ryan — with technicians substituted for nursing work, despite the unit handling “extreme kidney failure” where “life and death” consequences hinge on RN coverage. Prime, the lawsuit alleges, is now pressing for a 1-to-3 ratio in dialysis, up from 1-to-2.

Second, Koranda worked in the med/surg unit where the nurse-to-patient ratio moved from 1-to-4 before Ascension’s ownership to 1-to-5, 1-to-6, and at points 1-to-7 by July 2024. Over her 52 years at the hospital, total RN headcount fell from 550 to 250, the lawsuit says.

Third, Poe — placed as a floater after her transfer — describes being sent to ED shifts she had no specialty training for, filing repeated “assignments despite objections,” and ultimately resigning involuntarily after a May 2024 night shift in which “there were no day shift nurses to relieve” her. She filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Public Health; IDPH cited Ascension but imposed no serious penalty, the lawsuit says.

The filing alleges that Prime and Ascension supervisors treated Wolff and her colleague Ryan as “troublemakers” for raising the unsafe-conditions concerns, and “would have engaged in discipline but for their union membership.”

Prime Healthcare is now a defendant in at least two separate, named-RN-led actions in Illinois: the Joliet civil suit, and the National Labor Relations Board complaint and rally activity reported last month at its St. Mary of Nazareth facility in Chicago. Ascension’s exposure is for the period before it sold the Joliet hospital to Prime.

Source: Will County civil filing, June 5, 2026, summarized by Patch Joliet (John Ferak, June 5–6, 2026).