COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being issued by Peter Van Runkle, President & CEO, Ohio Health Care Association:
Ohioans want quality nursing home care. They want to be confident that when they entrust their parents or other loved ones to a nursing home, they are going to be well cared for. Unfortunately for Ohio’s seniors and their families, Governor Taft wants to cut the Medicaid funding that supports quality care in the state’s long-term care facilities.
Ohio’s Medicaid program pays for the care of two-thirds of the state’s nursing home residents. As a result, Medicaid dollars dictate much of what happens in Ohio nursing homes. The Taft Administration is proposing to cut Medicaid funding for seniors in nursing homes by $90 million below current levels, while increasing the rest of Medicaid by more than $500 million.
It is no mystery why Medicaid spending for nursing home services goes up. Each year it costs Ohio’s nursing homes more to provide the quality care Ohioans demand. Staff wages and benefits, workers’ compensation charges, liability insurance premiums, and other costs of care continue to increase. Every year the patients entering Ohio’s nursing facilities are more acutely ill and, because of that, more expensive to care for.
Seventy-five percent of the cost of operating a nursing home is for nurses, nursing assistants, and other health care workers, so the deep funding cuts the Governor wants inevitably will result in staff layoffs and lower quality care. Homes eventually will be put out of business, and their residents will have to move. These things are happening in other states where funding has been cut.
A recent analysis by the accounting firm BDO Seidman found that the true cost of providing quality care consistently exceeds Medicaid reimbursement rates. Nationally, this under-funding amounted to at least $4.1 billion in 2001. According to the report, Ohio’s Medicaid program under-funded nursing home care that year by $7.65 a day, or $148 million a year. Medicaid needs to pay its fair share, especially since the federal government contributes 60 cents of every dollar Medicaid pays.
Ohio government figures show that nursing homes are not the primary reason for Medicaid’s increasing drain on the state budget. During the past eight years, Medicaid nursing home spending grew by 40%, but the rest of Medicaid increased by more than 100%. Growth in the cost of drugs alone exceeded 40% in just three years. Nursing homes are not the problem.
According to the Taft Administration’s own numbers, Ohio’s nursing homes saved the state budget more than $400 million over the past two years. Medicaid rates for nursing homes were cut by 4% in 2003 and 6% in 2004. The Governor has now proposed even deeper cuts. In a time of increasing costs and workforce shortages, this cannot help but have a real impact on nursing home staffing and on quality of care.
Ohio’s long-term care providers worked with two recent study groups that looked at Medicaid expenditures and nursing facility reimbursement: the Commission to Reform Medicaid and the Nursing Facility Reimbursement Study Council, chaired by State Representative Shawn Webster. Representative Webster’s Council has been working to reform the nursing home payment formula in a way that promotes efficiency in operations and supports ever-increasing standards of quality, while ensuring a reasonable return for the investment and risk providers undertake.
Representative Webster’s work will save the state money by slowing growth in nursing home spending. Part of his solution is to create incentives for Ohioans to take personal responsibility for their long-term care by purchasing insurance policies when they are young enough to afford them. This not only reduces future Medicaid costs, but also gives the policy-holder more control over how and where their own long-term care needs are met. The Study Council’s carefully crafted approach is in striking contrast to the Governor’s proposal to indiscriminately slash dollars intended to care for our elderly, disabled, and convalescent.
Governor Taft says nursing homes are caring for fewer people than in the past. The reality is that more people are using nursing homes than ever before, they just are not staying as long. According to Miami University’s Scripps Gerontology Center, Ohio’s nursing homes admit more than twice as many patients now than they did in 1992. Many of these patients come for short stays for recuperation, at far less cost than if they had stayed in the hospital.
The Governor also wants to have total control over the Medicaid budget, and over the nursing home reimbursement system. There are two important reasons why nursing home reimbursement requirements are set in state law. First, this arrangement ensures the stability and predictability of the system and the care it funds. Second, no other segment of health care is as reliant on state and federal dollars to support quality care. The proper forum for funding decisions affecting tens of thousands of Ohioans is in the General Assembly. The legislature can hear the arguments of both sides and draw a reasonable balance between the needs of seniors and the demands of the state budget.
The Governor suggests that if Ohio spends enough money on home care for seniors and people with disabilities, the state can cut funding for nursing home care. The members of the Ohio Health Care Association have long supported the concept that seniors, people with disabilities, and their families should be able to choose the most appropriate type of care for their needs. Many more options are available today than just ten years ago, even for those who cannot pay their own way.
But the fact remains that families turn to nursing homes when other options no longer work. At some point, it becomes too difficult to keep a loved one at home. Ohio’s families need to know that when that time comes, the nursing home will be there, and it will have enough staff and other resources to provide good care.
OHCA will keep working with the Ohio General Assembly and the Taft Administration to solve the problems resulting from reduced state tax revenues and growing Medicaid rolls. We must, however, keep fighting to assure Ohio’s seniors, disabled, and their families that the quality of their long-term care will not be threatened by funding cuts.
Ohio Health Care Association
CONTACT: Peter Van Runkle, President & CEO of Ohio Health CareAssociation, +1-614-436-4154, or pvanrunkle@ohca.org
Web site: http://www.ohca.org/
