Group says budget cuts to hurt small hospitals most

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Business is bustling -- and squirming and stretching -- at Southern Illinois' most sophisticated nursery for newborn babies, where ribbons are stuck to tiny girls' heads and their ankle ID bands are about as big as their daddies' wedding rings.

Without the unit nearby, more critically ill babies wouldn't make it, Jeana Jackson, a registered nurse, said as she left the nursery for a coffee break Friday.

"I wish people in Springfield realized that," she said.

Gov. George Ryan's ordered cuts to what hospitals get paid for treating the poor could be a tough blow for the Memorial Hospital of Carbondale's neonatal intensive-care unit, the only facility of its kind in the state south of Springfield. Nearly 80 percent of the nursery's little patients are on Medicaid.

The unit, which keeps alive babies born sick or too soon, gets nearly half of its $2.5 million budget from the insurance program for the poor and would have to cut nursing jobs or close, depending on how much they lose, hospital controller Michael Kassen said. Without the unit, women with high-risk pregnancies or who go into labor too soon would have to travel to St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Paducah, Ky., or Evansville, Ind., to get the care they need.

$135 million cut

Seeking to fill a $500 million budget gap, Ryan has ordered cuts of, among other things, some $135 million from what Illinois hospitals get for treating Medicaid recipients.

The cuts include money for outpatient care and treatment by specialists, as well as long-term hospitalization for Medicaid patients.

They also include lopping off nearly $14 million from a special $201 million fund for hospitals like Carbondale's Memorial, which treat large numbers of poor patients and are located in rural areas with few medical services.

By late last week, it wasn't clear how much each hospital would lose, said Ellen Feldhausen, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Aid.

The Illinois Hospital and HealthSystems Association warns that some half-dozen of the state's 220 hospitals could be forced to close, all of them among smaller hospitals with fewer than 150 beds. The cuts could push another half-dozen small hospitals, most in cash-strapped rural areas, to the brink of bankruptcy, said Barbara Dallas, director of rural hospitals for the industry group.

But the cuts will hurt hospitals large and small, in the north and south, administrators say.

Chicago's Northwestern Memorial would lose up to $9 million.

White County's 99-bed long-term unit could be wiped out by the cutbacks, said Michael Thompson, president of the 14-bed hospital.

"It's a really scary time for us," he said.