A cut of 60.5 million a year will effect Florida Nursing Homes in a big way. These cuts are effecting how the Nursing Homes are paid by Medicaid for those residents that have not paid there bills. There is an a way that the Nursing Home industry can add the bad debt to their cost of doing business, which will effect the rate medicaid will pay. Under a new law this will be changed.
A new Avalere Health analysis detailing the negative impact on Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) resulting from so called “bad debt” provisions passed in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 finds facilities in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Louisiana, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia and New Jersey will absorb the largest Medicare funding cuts. Nationally, the provision will cut SNF payments by at least $3 billion over the FY 2012-21 budget window.
Alan G. Rosenbloom, President of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (AQNHC), pointed out that the phrase “bad debt” is a complete misnomer. The federal government itself, he said, prevents SNFs from collecting as much as 90 percent of SNF bad debt. “SNFs have no legal recourse to collect ‘bad debt’ from state Medicaid agencies — and is more accurately described as ‘uncollectible debt’ as mandated by federal law,” he stated. He noted the U.S. SNF sector, America’s second largest health facility employer, faces yet another $8-9 billion in cuts between FY 2012-21, resulting just from the looming sequestration threat