Federal Medicaid Funding Awaits State Answers
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire’s request for more federal Medicaid money for nursing homes has stalled because state officials have failed to respond to a Bush administration request for information.
Mary Kahn, spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said federal officials asked New Hampshire in August for more data on its request for additional nursing home money. State officials said they sent the information in on Oct. 1 and will remain in contact with CMS to answer any further questions.
The state legislature voted this year to levy a 6 percent tax on gross revenues of state nursing homes and to ask the federal government to match the money with funds from Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor. New Hampshire plans to redistribute the money to nursing homes, based on the number of Medicaid recipients they house.
To avoid over-taxing nursing homes with few Medicaid patients, the state also asked the federal government to waive a regulation requiring a uniform tax on health-care facilities across the state.
Kahn said CMS, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, will work with New Hampshire officials on their June requests once they provide more information. She said she did not know how much longer the process would take.
“The ball is in their court on this,” Kahn said in an interview Wednesday.
According to Douglas McNutt, acting director of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Division of Elderly and Adult Services, the department has been working to answer the series of complicated questions posed by CMS concerning Medicaid payments.
“The letter is not late,” McNutt said. “It’s not that this is overdue or anything. It’s just that those questions were asked and we have made a concerted effort to get together to respond to them.”
McNutt said responding to the federal request for further information required consultation with the New Hampshire attorney general’s office.
McNutt said he was not aware that information concerning the Medicaid reimbursement request would hold up review of the waiver application. The state “immediately” answered outstanding questions in July about the waiver request, he said.
John Poirier, executive director of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, said the federal money is desperately needed. He said New Hampshire nursing homes have not received additional Medicaid funding since 1999 and are losing more and more money each year.
Additional Medicaid money “will allow for facilities to bring in additional staff, to pay existing staff more so that there is better retention in the facilities,” Poirier said.
Poirier said he was bothered by the slowness with which New Hampshire was taking up the federal questions.
“I’m disappointed that New Hampshire has not yet responded to CMS, and my organization is urging them to respond as quickly as they can get good, constructive answers back to them,” he said. “It is something that is critical to these facilities and if there is รก any more significant delay than already has occurred in the approval of this program, it will not help our facilities.”
According to Bill Hamilton, advocacy director for AARP New Hampshire, a number of states are trying to get more Medicaid money for nursing homes, a development that is placing stress on the federal budget.
“CMS is looking at it a little more closely because now there’s another state that’s going to be doing it, [there are] additional costs,” said Hamilton, whose organization represents senior citizens.
Other states that have made similar requests to CMS include New Jersey, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
