An Article in B4 of Today’s Wall Street Journal starts off by saying that various nursing home companies are aiming to cut expenses “to help offset the impact of a severe Medicare reimbursement cut coming in two months.”
Kaiser Health reported that the cuts were necessary because Medicare made unexpected payments under a new classification system.
Ok. That is alot of information.
For starters, it does appear Medicare has announced they will not pay nursing homes what they thought they would/could.
Why?
Because nursing homes were charging them more than they expected to pay and they ran out of money. Sort of.
So now the nursing homes are cutting costs and their stock is plummeting.
And the nursing homes are angry, and shocked. And surprised.
That Medicare couldn’t increase their payments.
Wow. My head hurts. But here is my worry: If nursing homes, for profit ones are cutting costs – what are they cutting?CEO pay? Or number of Nurses?
Benefits for top executives? Or the number of CNAs on the floor?
And why isn’t Medicare able to pay as planned? Oh, because they already gave the money to nursing homes. So why again are the nursing homes having to make drastic cuts?