“Medicaid Weighs Attaching Strings to Nursing Home Payments to Improve Patient Care”

 

“Medicaid Weighs Attaching Strings to Nursing Home Payments to Improve Patient Care,” by Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News

Quote:

“The Biden administration is considering a requirement that the nation’s 15,500 nursing homes spend most of their payments from Medicaid on direct care for residents and limit the amount that is used for operations, maintenance, and capital improvements or diverted to profits. … If adopted, it would be the first time the federal government insists that nursing homes devote the majority of Medicaid dollars to caring for residents. The strategy, which has not yet been formally proposed, is among several steps officials are considering after the covid-19 pandemic hit vulnerable nursing home residents especially hard. During the first 12 months of the pandemic, at least 34% of the people killed by the virus lived in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities even though residents of those facilities make up fewer than 1% of the U.S. population.”

 

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

Most Medicaid dollars don’t pay for care? Whose fault is that? Could it be that stringent regulations governing “operations, maintenance, and capital improvements” suck up most of Medicaid’s inadequate reimbursements? Central planners believe they can get better care simply by demanding it, but wishing won’t make it so.