URBANA — Because of anticipated delays in state Medicaid reimbursements, officials at the Champaign County Nursing Home are looking at borrowing as much as $2 million to ease the facility through difficult financial times.

"It's our problem, created by the state," nursing home manager Michael Scavotto said Monday night at a meeting of the nursing home board of directors. "It's very much our problem."

Should state reimbursements be delayed by 120 days, as state officials have warned the nursing home, it may have to borrow the money through revenue anticipation notes.

But even that could be problematic, said Scavotto, because those notes require the state to commit to a schedule of when it will pay money owed the nursing home.

"They may not want to do that. They may say that they can't do that," Scavotto said.

The only other option is what Alan Nudo, a member of both the nursing home board and the county board, suggested would be a short term solution: borrowing money from the county general fund.

"If we have to, from an emergency standpoint as long as we have everything else in place, " Nudo said. "I would push for a short, short term, as long as other (promised revenue) is imminent. I'd take some heat but that's all right."

Also Monday the nursing home board deferred acting on a proposed 5 percent increase in room and service rates for the fiscal year beginning Dec. 1.

If approved, the daily rate for skilled care at the facility would increase from the current $159 to $167. Adult day care would increase from $69 a day to $73 a day.

But action was delayed until Scavotto comes back to the board next month for a full proposal for implementing private suites at the facility, which is operating at far below capacity.

Nursing home board members said they believed private rooms would be popular at the facility.

"To me it's the privacy. That's what I'd want," said board chair Mary Ellen O'Shaughnessey. "I don't need a flat-screen TV."

"It's the family that wants to come in and not have to have the other person in the room listening to a conversation," Nudo said. "It's just that privacy a family wants with their loved one."