Nursing Home Industry Battered by New Reductions in
Funding will Face Closures
Industry leaders say the nursing home industry
could be at a tipping point.
Oct. 8, 2009 - "The nation's nursing homes are
perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services possibly even
closing because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep
federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say," The
Associated Press reports.
"A Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated
$16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years was enacted
at week's end by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services," according to
The Associated Press.
This move came in addition to state-level
reductions or flat-funding "that already had the industry reeling. And
Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part
of health care reform."
The crisis is compounded by an aging baby boomer
population.
"The nation's 16,000 nursing homes housed 1.85
million people last year, up from 1.79 million in 2007, U.S. Census
Bureau figures show.
Already this year, 24 states have cut funding for
nursing home care and other health services needed by low-income people
who are elderly or disabled, according to the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research firm based in Washington, D.C."
Officials at some facilities say they have closed because of inadequate
Medicaid reimbursement rates.
"Medicare cuts are troubling, they say, because the
higher Medicare reimbursements have been used to compensate for the
lower Medicaid rates" (Collins, 10/4).
This
is part of Kaiser Health News' Daily Report for Oct. 5, 2009 - a summary
of health policy coverage from more than 300 news organizations. The
full summary of the day's news can be found
here and you can sign up for e-mail subscriptions to the Daily
Report
here. In addition, our staff of reporters and correspondents file
original stories each day, which you can find on our
home page.
Oct. 8, 2009 - "The nation's nursing homes are
perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services possibly even
closing because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep
federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say," The
Associated Press reports. 
