Smaller Chicago-area hospitals may be forced to significantly limit services or close with the passage of Gov. Bruce Rauner's first budget plan that will cut more than $1.5 billion from Medicaid, with over $800 million coming from hospitals, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
Leaders from Chicago safety-net hospitals met with state legislators in a meeting Monday at Norwegian American Hospital in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Safety-net hospitals are those where more than 50 percent of patients rely on Medicaid, according to the Illinois Hospital Association classification.
Numerous hospitals will be unable to continue operating if Gov. Rauner's budget cuts go through May 31.
"I don't think we can absorb any cuts," Loretto Hospital CEO Sonia Mehta, MD, told the Chicago Sun Times. "We don't have any fat left."
More than 40 percent of Illinois' hospitals are operating in the red and are still coping with the state's 2012 Medicaid reform bill, Maryjane Wurth, president and CEO of the Illinois Hospital Association told the Chicago Sun Times.
State Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, chairman of the Illinois Senate House Appropriations-Human Services Committee, said Gov. Rauner's decision to take funding from higher education, hospitals and the Department of Children and Family Services "horrible solutions."
"If [Norwegian American] closes, if St. Mary's closes, if St. Bernard's closes, if Sinai closes, if Loretto closes, if Roseland closes, where do people go in our neighborhoods in Chicago for health care? There are no places," Rep. Greg Harris told the Chicago Sun Times.
John Jay Shannon, MD, CEO of the Cook County Health and Hospital System, said county hospitals would feel indirect effects from the budget cuts, such as in emergency departments, where more people will need to go for care because they will no longer have access to medical services in their communities.