By Hector Flores
³This organization has shown so much resilience,² he said at a July 20 news conference in the NUMC auditorium. ³It¹s good to stand up with the backing of our state and county officials, administration [and] workers and it¹s great to be able to continue our mission² to provide health care to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.
At the news conference, Gianelli thanked New York state and local officials for Medicaid reimbursement and the restoration of state budget cuts that totaled close to $40 million. The restoration of the funds should give the hospital needed breathing room to develop and implement its preliminary strategic plan, which will help stabilize its finances.
This is excellent news for NHCC, because the hospital has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for the last six months. If it were to fail to balance its books, the county would be responsible for the facility¹s $300 million debt. Gianelli blames the hospital¹s fiscal woes on rising health care costs, the increasing number of uninsured people and the slow rate of reimbursement by Medicaid.
³I¹m here today to thank our partners in state and county government for working with NHCC over the last two and a half years to secure these breakthrough funding approvals,² Gianelli said. ³I also want to congratulate our state officials for arriving at a compromise on the 2006-2007 state budget that restored virtually all of the cuts that were initially proposed. These breakthrough funding approvals, combined with the restoration of the New York state budget cuts, will give NHCC the chance to realign our operations.²
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi added, ³These important steps should help put NHCC back on solid financial ground, and will allow the hospital¹s new leadership to move forward with a long-term plan that will enable the hospital to continue providing critical service to some of the county¹s least fortunate and neediest residents.²
According to Gianelli, the reimbursement approval provides for supplemental disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments for NUMC, as well as enhanced Medicaid reimbursement for the Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility. DSH payments are Medicaid funds designed to support safety-net hospitals that incur losses by serving low-income Medicaid, uninsured and under-insured patients.
NUMC now stands to receive the full benefit of these supplemental payments, the first of which were distributed on July 19 and totaled $35 million ‹ $14.7 million more than what was expected this year. Gianelli estimates that future payments will exceed original projections by approximately $19 million in 2007 and $20 million in 2008.
Now that the Holly Patterson facility has been given hospital-based status, it will be entitled to Medicaid reimbursement for nursing homes. The New York state Department of Health OK¹d NHCC for this type of Medicaid reimbursement in January. Hospital-based status will provide the corporation with approximately $5.5 million annually.
³This successful appeal ... means that it may be possible to operate [Holly Patterson] at close to break-even,² Gianelli said. ³Hospital-based status will improve the financial stability of [Holly Patterson], allowing us to think strategically about the future of the nursing facility.²
In addition to the two reimbursement approvals, NHCC also benefits from the compromise reached by Gov. George Pataki, the state Senate and Assembly to restore nearly all of the proposed cuts to the 2006-07 state budget. The cuts would have reduced Medicaid reimbursement to NHCC by $25 million annually.
The compromise also reinstates the Medicaid funding that was cut in the proposed state budget, reimburses hospitals the cost of emergency room visits and provides for a grant for public nursing homes. Gianelli estimated that the emergency room reimbursement and the public nursing home grant would provide $984,000 to NHCC in 2007, $2.1 million in 2008 and $5.5 million in 2009.
³The governor, the state Senate and the state Assembly are to be congratulated for putting together a budget that recognizes the importance of Medicaid reimbursement to safety net providers, acknowledges the growing cost of our emergency rooms and sees the special role of public nursing homes in the state¹s health care delivery system,² Gianelli said.
State Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Republican of Garden City, added, ³We note three distinct steps to assist health care for Nassau residents and the Nassau University Medical Center in particular. The first step concerns the bipartisan action by the Assembly, the Senate and the governor in restoring $409.3 million to the state Medicaid budget. The second is the conclusion of the negotiations with the state health department in regard to the level of funding to be allocated to NUMC via the DSH payment formula. The third are the monies to be paid to hospital-based nursing, in which NHCC is now included. These significant amounts should enable the corporation running NUMC to ensure first-class, quality health care and to initiate a program of progress and stability and balanced budgets.²
Nassau County Legislator Norma Gonsalves, a Republican of East Meadow, thanked Gianelli for his efforts in ensuring that the institutions under the management of NHCC will now have a future. ³Arthur is a great communicator,² Gonsalves said. ³He has fought a good fight for NHCC and that is why we are here today. I¹m here to say that partnerships do work, and not only will NUMC survive, it will thrive.²
What is the NHCC?
Shelley Lotenberg, a spokeswoman for the NHCC, explained that the corporation, which was founded in 1999, has an annual budget of half a billion dollars, which it uses to operate NUMC, a Level 1 trauma center and teaching hospital, with 631 beds; the A. Holly Patterson Geriatric Center, a nursing facility with nearly 900 beds; and seven community health care centers throughout the county.
NUMC¹s specialized services include orthopedics, psychiatry, obstetrics, a burn center, a hyperbaric chamber and neonatal intensive care units, and it is a first-rate emergency room provider. ³The services provided by NHCC impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of county residents each year,² Lotenberg said. ³They treat close to 80,000 emergency room patients, 200,000 clinic visits at NUMC and over 60,000 clinic visits at the community health care centers. We are the largest safety-net hospital, with 3,400 dedicated employees [in the corporation] who help maintain our mission of providing health care to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.²
Comments about this story? HFlores@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 283.
Photos by Hector Flores
