 "Photo: Julia Rendleman ~ Daily Egyptian.")
Low-cost health care clinics in Carbondale are readily available, but suffering from insufficient funding and the state of Illinois' inability to reimburse Medicaid costs, said Fred Bernstein, CEO of Community Health Emergency Services, Inc.
Bernstein's clinics offer a wide array of low-cost health care services, from pediatrics to endocrinology, operate in seven counties across southern Illinois and are approved by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations.
He said roughly 62% of people who use CHESI clinics, most of whom are low-income and cannot afford private physicians or hospital bills, depend on Medicaid and the state is at times more than six months behind on Medicaid payments.
“When you're earning the money you need, and the state is … not paying on anything remotely resembling a timely basis, that severely restricts our cash flow,” Bernstein said. “It makes it very difficult for us to keep operations.”
However, Southern Illinois Healthcare, the large hospital parent company based in Carbondale, isn't feeling the budget strain from Medicaid it felt five months ago, said Rosslind Rice, spokeswoman for SIH.
“We're very pleased,” said Rice. “The state has made significant progress, and it's really a non-issue for us at this time.”
Although his clinics have received federal stimulus package money, Bernstein said the grants that primarily support them are underfunded.
“We continually have to deal with the fact that, although funding has improved for us over the years, it's still inadequate,” he said.
Another 18-20% of CHESI clients, especially those in Carbondale, depend on a sliding fee scale payment option—an option where a patient's fee is discounted up to 60% based on their income level, Bernstein said.
Bernstein also said his clinics are under-used because not enough people know about them.
“I think pride sometimes interferes with folks because people have lost jobs,” he said. “People just don't know that we exist and that we want to help.”
CHESI Board of Directors member Gordon Plumb, who also practices psychology in Carbondale, said the organization is still gaining the trust of low-income residents in the more middle-class Carbondale community.
“Many of the people who need health care services and who are poor and marginal are not aware of CHESI,” Plumb said. “They're not aware that we can cover people, and they don't need to have a dime in their pocket.”
Nick Johnson can be reached at nickj39@siu.edu
