Healthcare organization announces Belleville expansion amid threats to Medicaid
SIHF Healthcare announced Thursday that it had purchased a medical building in downtown Belleville and planned to spend $6 million to renovate it and expand services.
Later that afternoon, SIHF President and CEO Larry McCulley appeared at a news conference in Cahokia Heights with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), warning that proposed Medicaid cuts could force it to close clinics and reduce other services in the metro-east.
It was a dichotomy that begged the question: “How would such cuts affect the Belleville project?” SIHF spokesman Tom Faulkner said Friday that officials are monitoring the federal situation closely.
“They’re hopeful that the cuts won’t come, but if they do come as they’ve been proposed, they will have an impact, and it won’t just have an impact on SIHF and Touchette,” he said. “It will have an impact on every healthcare organization that accepts Medicaid.”
Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, are working to reduce the federal budget by $880 billion, causing Democrats to anticipate cuts to Medicaid, the federal insurance program that provides healthcare for people with low incomes and limited resources.
SIHF is a nonprofit organization that staffs Touchette Regional Hospital in Cahokia Heights and operates about 40 clinics in southern and eastern Illinois that are “federally qualified,” meaning they provide services regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
About 78% of the organization’s revenue comes from Medicaid reimbursements, according to Faulkner and an Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board database.
SIHF already has begun renovations on the 69,000-square-foot, four-story medical building at 180 S. Third St. in Belleville that formerly was owned by St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
“A $6 million investment is nothing to scoff at,” Mayor Patty Gregory said. “We’re very excited about it, and I’m just hoping that this is the beginning of many new possibilities for where the former St. Elizabeth’s used to be.”
Gregory said one reason she ran for office in 2021 was disappointment over St. Elizabeth’s decision to leave Belleville and move to O’Fallon in 2017 under the late former Mayor Mark Eckert. She was a founding member of a group called Oppose the Move.
Gregory is running for reelection on April 1 with Irma Golliday, candidate for Belleville City Clerk, who also is a board member for SIHF Healthcare, formerly known as Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation. Gregory is being challenged by current City Clerk Jenny Gain Meyer.
The city of Belleville hasn’t offered any financial incentives, such as tax-increment-financing funds, for the SIHF renovation project, said Cliff Cross, director of economic development, planning and zoning.
SIHF formerly rented space in the medical building, according to Kelly Barbeau, spokeswoman for Hospital Sisters Health System, which operates the new St. Elizabeth’s.
“They were part of the (hospital’s downtown Belleville) campus for more than 30 years,” she said.
SIHF bought the medical building from St. Elizabeth’s for $2.95 million on Dec. 6, 2024, St. Clair County records show. The hospital now is the one renting space for its outpatient physical-therapy services and imaging center for X-rays and mammograms.
An SIHF news release stated that the organization also will continue with its existing services in the building (cardiology and primary care and imaging and laboratory testing) and add the following:
- An InstaCare (urgent) clinic
- Orthopedic care
- Behavioral health services
- An on-site pharmacy
- Women’s health services
- Ear, nose and throat care
- Plastic surgery
- Gastroenterology
- Outpatient general surgery
- Podiatry
“SIHF also plans to add more physicians, specialists, nurses, and medical staff to their team creating a workforce of over 640 individuals,” the release stated.
Durbin traveled to Cahokia Heights for the news conference Thursday to draw attention to the possible impact Medicaid cuts would have on SIHF, Touchette and small rural hospitals in southern Illinois.
McCulley said proposals to cut 15% of Medicaid coverage could have a $5 to $10 million impact on SIHF’s annual budget.
“How do you cut that? Well, the only thing you can do is close locations, eliminate service lines like dental, obstetrics, end partnerships that raise and lift up future providers,” he said. “We’re looking at having to close partnerships like our two family medical residencies in Alton and possibly in O’Fallon.”
McCulley also referred to the possible closing of clinics in Red Bud, Olney, Salem, Belleville, Granite City and O’Fallon.
Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation was formed in 1984 to attract doctors to East St. Louis and surrounding communities that were “devastated by closed factories, two decades of chronic unemployment, decreasing property values, and accompanying societal ills,” according to its history.
The Sauget-based organization opened its first clinic in Centreville with a physician, a nurse and a director. Today, it operates 40 clinics in 25 cities in southern and eastern Illinois.
Officials hope to complete renovations on the Belleville medical building by the fall of 2026, the SIHF release stated.
“The new center follows the emerging model across the United States of providing primary and specialty outpatient care that brings the family back into family medicine,” it stated.
BND reporter Lexi Cortes contributed to this story.
