North Dakota Long Term Care Association Issue Briefs 2003

6200 NURSING HOME RESIDENTS ASK FOR YOUR HELP...

Nursing home residents can’t be in Bismarck to ask for your help and support.  Each day they struggle with what we take for granted:  eating, dressing, walking, bathing, visiting…  We are here to advocate on their behalf.  It is the mission and focus of every North Dakota nursing facility to provide the best care and services to every resident – make each day their best day.  To accomplish this goal we rely upon staff.  If nursing facility payments are cut, staff will be cut. 

Help us help residents…maintain our funding.  Thank you.

Nursing homes have already been cut!  On October 1, 2002 federal Medicare funding for North Dakota nursing homes was cut by 10%.  This amounted to a cut of $26 per day for every resident on Medicare.

Cost pressures increasing dramatically!  It’s hard to use any other words than dramatic when a nursing home is quoted a liability insurance premium increase of 90% and that’s just what happened to facilities this past year.  Health insurance premiums are also going up.  At the Wishek Home for the Aged, their family plan costs over $1,200 monthly!  HIPAA compliance and regulations are costing every facility thousands of dollars.

Nursing home revenue is government controlled – costs are not.  Nursing homes cannot raise tuition, increase fees, raise prices or increase mill levies.  Nursing home rates are strictly controlled by State government and State government is the only entity that can increase revenue for nursing homes.

Twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week care.  Nursing homes provide “24/7” care 365 days of every year.  We cannot cut care by 10% or say we will only serve residents for 22 hours a day or only for 6.5 days per week.  We have a moral and legal obligation to care for our residents every hour of every day.

State budget cuts to rates do “five” times the damage.  For every dollar cut from nursing home rates, the effect is $5 because of the Federal match and private pay rates, which are equalized to State rates.

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July 31 2003 || www.ndltca.org/data/data01.html