
CHICAGO — From their offices in a crumbling former nursing school, Aimee Dinschel and Michelle Pihlaja-Olson were preparing to interview 25 applicants for public health jobs. It should have been a moment of optimism for their hospital system, which only recently began to turn a profit after more than a century of bleeding money, and which was expanding its services to the poorest residents of Cook County. Instead, the women were worried.