Passavant owed around $6 million from the state

By Gary Scott on October 21, 2016 at 1:04pm

Hundreds of organizations across the state are being effected by Illinois’ budget crisis, and Passavant Area Hospital is no different.

President and CEO Doug Rahn, who announced his retirement at the end of the year, was featured on WLDS’ “AM Conversation” this week. During that conversation, Rahn explained that Passavant is owed several million dollars by the state of Illinois.

“They currently owe us about six-million dollars. Now we’re fortunate enough to be in a very strong cash position and we don’t have an overwhelming majority of state workers like Springfield may experience, so that has been a benefit in that regard. But yeah, they currently owe us about six-million dollars, but I feel very badly for a lot of the firms that are very dependent on state payments, they’re smaller, they don’t have the cash reserves, it’s just a travesty,” says Rahn.

With such a large amount owed to Passavant, Rahn is concerned about the prospect of not being fully reimbursed.

“We are worried that the state at some point will just throw up their arms and say ‘we just can’t afford to pay you that six-million dollars, we’ll give you three-million.’ We’re going to push very hard to not allow that to happen and the Illinois Hospital Association is working very aggressively with the state to try and make sure hospitals get paid for the services that they deliver. We deliver those services in good faith, and we will continue to deliver those services, but there are some hospitals and some groups that are really having to question the state’s promise,” Rahn says.

Rahn brought up that Springfield Clinic, which is owed $68 million from the state, was forced to start collecting from patients regardless of whether the state has paid their share.

Despite being owed $6 million from the state, Rahn says Passavant is in a “growth mode” and has “ramped up our recruitment efforts for Nursing.” Passavant is hosting a job fair next week as they continue to focus on workforce development. According to Rahn, Passavant has hired 27 nurses since last July and has about 12 to 13 starting work after graduation.