Wisconsin nursing home operators are the latest to see an increase to the state’s Medicaid rate at a time when providers across the country are still battling back from significant workforce shortages and historic inflation.
Medicaid cost coverage will increase from 77% for fiscal year 2022 to 91% for fiscal year 2023.
The new rate setting model prioritizes and supports direct care nursing funding and increasing health care worker wages overall, according to Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) Secretary-designee Karen Timberlake.
“The people who work in and lead Wisconsin’s nursing homes are critical to ensuring quality care for residents across the state of Wisconsin,” she said in a news release.
The move carries out one of the recommendations from Gov. Tony Evers’ task force on caregiving. Wisconsin has already and plans to invest more than $500 million in payments and incentives to nursing homes from July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2023.
Wisconsin Health Care Association CEO Rick Abrams said the organization is grateful that DHS implemented a plan to raise rates that considers the varying needs of providers across the state.
“Rate increases in the support services and direct care cost centers will help Wisconsin nursing home providers ensure quality care while also addressing ongoing financial challenges, including increased operational costs due to COVID-19 and increased inflation,” Abrams said in the release.
LeadingAge Wisconsin President and CEO John Sauer echoed Abrams’ sentiments, adding that both residents and staff will be “greatly assisted” by the funding system put forth.
“Building on the long-term care funding provisions contained in the 2021-2023 state budget, DHS has implemented bold steps to further invest in our state’s fragile nursing home system and has done so in a way that targets dollars where they are most desperately needed,” Sauer said in a statement.
There are 12 states that have Medicaid add ons currently tied to the end of the PHE, according to American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living President and CEO Mark Parkinson.
Parkinson has said that the big priority for 2023 is to get all 50 states to revisit and ultimately adjust their Medicaid rates.
“What we hope that all 50 states do is to rebase their rates, to take a look at the actual current cost of taking care of people in the Medicaid setting – not relying upon numbers that in some cases are 10 years old and they’re just attaching an inflation number to it … So we would hope that every state would actively consider rebasing those rates,” he told reporters this week at the annual AHCA/NCAL conference in Nashville.
Parkinson also pointed to a way in which the federal government could step in and assist, specifically by issuing a Medicaid adequacy rule — which would require states to pay an adequate amount of Medicaid to not just nursing homes but all government providers.
Companies featured in this article:
AHCA/NCAL, American Health Care Association, Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Wisconsin Health Care Association
