By Illinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – Illinois’ hospitals had been hemorrhaging money because of the COVID-19 crisis. To help, the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services announced that hospitals will receive a lifeline of $75 million in new federal money to help hospitals.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker had directed that the $75 million will be paid in three increments over the next three months, Danny Chun, vice president of Corporate Communications and Marketing for the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (IHHA), said.

“The state has been able to obtain additional federal funding for the Medicaid program, which they are sending to hospitals,” Chun said. “It is a leveraging of the higher federal Medicaid matching rate, which increased by 6.2%.”

There are many ways that Illinois could have chosen to use those funds, he said. Pritzker has chosen to use the funds to give relief to hospitals.

IHHA represents the whole spectrum of hospitals in the state, including both public and private hospitals. Even before the coronavirus, more than 40% of Illinois hospitals were operating in the red or struggling to break even. Because of COVID-19, all Illinois hospitals have been walloped with huge revenue drops and massive spending increases, Chun said.

“Hospitals are losing $1.4 billion a month from revenues that they are not getting because of the COVID crisis,” Chun said.

Hospitals have had to postpone elected surgeries and procedures in order to care for COVID-19 patients. Fewer non-virus patients are going to hospitals for care.

“People are afraid to go to hospitals,” Chun said. “They have not been coming to the ER. They are not getting the care they need and they have stayed away from hospitals.”

At the same time, hospitals have been incurring substantially higher costs to respond to the crisis and treat patients.

“Converting wings to ICU units, creating negative pressure isolation rooms, equipment, PPE, supplies, drugs, staff. There have been tremendous costs,” Chun said.

In the long term, hospitals will need continued support and considerable additional funding to make it through the next few years, Chun said.

A bipartisan working group in the Illinois Legislature is seeking federal approval for a plan that would use the Illinois Hospital Assessment Program to give the state nearly $250 million annually in additional funding for Illinois hospitals, the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (DHFS), said in a press release.

The program will maximize Illinois participation in Medicaid, DHFS said.

Chun said the COVID-19 crisis will continue to put enormous stress on Illinois hospitals until a vaccine can be found.

“More will be needed from Congress and help is needed in the Illinois General Assembly,” Chun said. “It’s vitally important that hospitals get the support they need so that they can keep on addressing the pandemic in the long term.”

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