Sangamon County Medical Society officials hope Springfield’s medical community turns out in force for a Statehouse rally to protest a growing backlog of unpaid bills for care of state workers and retirees.
“Our goal is to create wide awareness of the problem,” Dr. Lawrence Smith, president of the medical society, said Tuesday. “This is a vital service of state government.”
The society plans to organize a “legislative awareness day” sometime in April, he said, adding that he hopes the Illinois State Medical Society will be involved.
Because of the state’s budget crunch, doctors and other health-care providers who care for people covered by state-funded health plans are waiting six to nine months to be paid.
Medical providers in the Springfield area are affected more than those in other parts of the state because of the concentration of state employees in the capital city, Smith said.
The delays have caused cash-flow problems at medical offices, resulting in delays in both hiring and equipment purchases, according to Isabel Manker, the medical society’s executive director.
There haven’t been any reports, at least not yet, of layoffs connected with the payment delays or of doctors requiring up-front payments from patients insured through state plans.
But Smith fears the delays eventually will affect patients’ access to health care and have a ripple effect on vendors that serve local health-care providers.
There are more than 600 doctors in Sangamon County and thousands of other people work in the local health-care industry, he said.
Anders Lindall, spokesman for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said, “AFSCME and our members share the frustration of doctors who are not being paid due to the state’s broken budget. … If only they could write a prescription for the tax reform Illinois needs to fund basic services and pay the bills.”
State medical society president Dr. James Milam said in a written statement that the society supports the concept of a “physician day” in Springfield.
He said the society is troubled by the payment delays and communicated that concern in a letter to Gov. Pat Quinn.
The delays put future patient care in “extreme jeopardy,” he said, adding that he hopes Quinn addresses the issue in the governor’s scheduled March 10 budget address.
The state’s payment delays are longest for the 161,200 people covered through self-insured plans funded by the state — about 46 percent of all those covered.
There’s a backlog of $317.6 million in unpaid bills for those plans, according to Stacey Solano, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
Before the delays became a big problem last summer, most bills from doctors and hospitals serving state workers were paid within a month or two.
Ironically, the federal government’s economic stimulus program has helped the state eliminate most payment delays for the care of low-income patients in the state’s Medicaid program. Payment delays used to be common in that program.
Dean Olsen can be reached at 788-1543.
Insured by state
A total of 348,100 state employees, retirees and dependents are insured by state government health plans. Some of those people live in Illinois and in other states, but an estimated 70,000 of them live in Sangamon County and adjacent counties.
Bill backlogs
Springfield Clinic, where 10 percent to 20 percent of all patients are covered by the state’s plans, is waiting on $15 million in payments from the state, said Mark Kuhn, the clinic’s chief administrative officer.
“I think everyone in Sangamon County at least is impacted by this issue,” he said. “Everyone is concerned.”
St. John’s Hospital is owed $11.3 million for serving state workers, retirees and dependents, with $6.3 million of that representing bills 90 days old or older, spokesman Brian Reardon said.
Memorial Medical Center is owed about $10 million, spokesman Michael Leathers said.
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, with 227 doctors, is waiting on $6.4 million in payments from state-funded plans. About half of the bills are more than 60 days old, SIU spokeswoman Nancy Zimmers said.
Because of tight finances at state-funded institutions, the medical school’s dean, Dr. J. Kevin Dorsey, decided SIU wouldn’t pay the $153,000 bill for SIU doctors’ 2010 membership dues with the state medical society and local medical societies in Sangamon, Macon, Adams and Jackson counties.
“Like everybody else, we’re looking at all discretionary spending,” Zimmers said. “We have been dramatically cutting back on all expenditures to help with cash flow.”
Dorsey’s decision eliminated about one-third of the Sangamon County Medical Society’s funding, but operations of the society, which employs two people, will continue and layoffs aren’t expected, Smith said. About 15 percent of SIU’s doctors are paying Sangamon County Medical Society dues — about $285 each — out of their own pockets, Manker said.
Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
