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MACOMB, ILL. -- McDonough District Hospital faces a $1.6 million deficit, but it's not the hospital's fault.

That money is owed to the hospital by a company called CIGNA, which provides a health care program for state employees.

CIGNA is behind on payments to the hospital because the state of Illinois has not paid it.

So it all stems back to the state's budget deficit, which at last look was between 12 and 13 billion dollars.

KHQA's Jarod Wells talked to the President and CEO of McDonough District Hospital today to find out how patients will be affected by lack of payments from the state.

McDonough District Hospital is getting small, regular payments from CIGNA, but right now those payments are for services the hospital provided last May. It has not received payments for services provided from June up until now, which equals about $1.6 million.

MDH President/CEO Stephen Hopper said "And for an organization our size, that's a significant amount of cash to be not paid, so to speak."

CIGNA is basically a third party administrator. The state pays it money, to pay hospitals for services it provides for state employees. CIGNA has a contract with McDonough district hospital. The current contract ends in June

Hopper said, "If McDonough District Hospital were to choose to drop the contract with CIGNA, many patients, or CIGNA patients, who are CIGNA patients now, if they chose to come to McDonough District Hospital, they'd have a much more significant cap of payment that they'd have to pay out of pocket."

A family's yearly payment would go from $4,400 to about $8,800. Here are some other options if the hospital were to drop the contract with CIGNA. Patients could stay with CIGNA and go to other hospitals in the area, like Carthage or Rushville. Or they could switch to Healthlink or HealthAlliance. But Hopper says those come with different costs and may have different coverage.

McDonough District Hospital has been dipping into its cash flow reserves since November to make up for the money that is owed to it, but it doesn't want to go any deeper. Hopper says at this point the hospital is not looking at cutting the amount or quality of services offered and patients should not be affected.

Hopper said, "At this point in time it's just a very, very serious aggravation."

President and CEO Stephen Hopper says the biggest concern right now is there is no plan coming from Springfield on how to deal with budget issues.

He says this will make it even harder to recruit doctors to the area.

That's a problem McDonough District Hospital already struggles with.