Saying the nation’s Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) sector has contributed substantially to advancing well being care reform and deficit reduction in the encounter of serious state Medicaid funding pressures along with other main budgetary problems, the Alliance for High quality Nursing House Care these days expressed alarm about the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) newly-published Final Rule [“Prospective Payment System and Consolidated Billing for Experienced Nursing Amenities for FY 2012”], and stated it’ll dangerously destabilize the nation’s 2nd biggest health facility employer, place patients and their care at deep risk, and put tens of 1000’s of well being jobs in instant jeopardy.
“The SNF sector has contributed heavily to advancing well being care reform and deficit reduction, and it is confronted by multiple ongoing threats to funding balance,” stated Alan G. Rosenbloom, President with the Alliance. “The ill-considered nature of the Rule and its dire implications to seniors, providers and jobs are significant, immediate and dangerous,” stated Alan G. Rosenbloom, President of the Alliance. “Plummeting state Medicaid funding, $14.6 billion in Medicare cuts contained in the Inexpensive Treatment Act (ACA), increasing patient acuity, shrinking duration of stay, escalating costs, and getting the lowest running margin of all supplier groups contributes to the SNF sector’s instability in the encounter of expanding need for treatment and services,” Rosenbloom ongoing.
In attempting to right an “inadvertent overpayment,” Rosenbloom stated CMS has gone nicely beyond the cautious correction urged not just by the sector but also by a bipartisan group of House and Senate members. “By including significant changes in payment methodology for therapy services, CMS also has crossed the line from over-correction into actual Medicare cuts,” he ongoing. “Lawmakers will now be positioned within the unfortunate position of getting to deal with an elevated threat to local seniors’ access to treatment consequently of this egregious regulatory motion. By no means within the history with the Medicare program has either CMS or Congress applied such a big correction in one yr.”