Cigna Insurance and Southern Illinois Healthcare have reached an agreement on a new contract.
Cigna officials announced the deal Thursday. The contract is retro-active to January first. Last week, more than 300 employees of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the School of Medicine, who have the state’s Quality Care Health Plan, found themselves "out of network" because of an administrative change in Cigna’s contract with Healthlink. That agreement ended December 31st. It had provided state employees on the Quality Care Health Plan access to SIH’s facilities, as well as other doctors and providers in the region.
The change has caused quite a bit of confusion. The new agreement is only with Southern Illinois Healthcare. There may still be some local providers who have yet to reach new agreements with Cigna. Cigna officials say anyone on the Quality Care plan can get more information by calling Cigna’s customer support.
State employee on the Healthlink plan were not impacted by the administrative changes involing Cigna.