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Medicare / Medicaid / Tricare News
Article Date: 26 Sep 2006 - 19:00pm (PDT)
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About 60 of New Hampshire's 78 nursing homes have
signed a complaint alleging that the state
Department of Health and Human Services owes
them $4.4 million for care provided to Medicaid
beneficiaries since 2002, the
Concord Monitor
reports. The nursing homes filed the complaint last
month after health department Commissioner John
Stephen told state lawmakers that there was a
surplus in the department's $192 million nursing
home budget. The complaint alleges that Medicaid
reimbursements are lower than the cost of providing
care and that payments over the past several years
have been lower than expected. John Poirier,
president of the
New
Hampshire Health Care Association, said, "You
can't tell the nursing home providers that you don't
have enough money to pay them the full rate while at
the same time you're telling the Legislature you
have excess money in the account." Doug McNutt,
chief of the
Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services, said the
surplus is the result of a decrease in the number of
nursing home residents, adding that Medicaid
reimbursement rates have increased in the past
several years. Pamela Walsh, a spokesperson for Gov.
John Lynch (D), said the governor "believes the
state should be meeting its commitment to nursing
homes and taxpayers and not shortchanging them" (Concord
Monitor, 9/21).
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