Boston Medical Center officials announced Wednesday that they will be cutting the equivalent of 130 full-time jobs and halting a $2 million subsidy to the Quincy Medical Center amongst other cost-cutting measures in response to reduced government funding, which includes Medicaid.
BMC plans on reducing costs by $61.5 million for the 2009 fiscal year with these measures, according to a Dec. 17 press release. State budget cuts in areas including Medicaid funding will cost the center $114 million, meaning BMC will still be at a loss of $52.5 million after the proposed cuts.
BMC’s troubles come in part as the result of a $30 million reduction in Medicaid rates for the 2009 fiscal year because the state government will now only pay 64 cents of every dollar BMC spends on low-income patient care, according to the BMC’s press release.
BMC officials were additionally notified in October that the state would not reimburse the $64 million BMC spent on providing care for Medicaid patients in the 2008 fiscal year, according to an Oct. 17 Boston Globe article.
Medicaid is a United States health program that provides need-based services to over 50 million Americans. Low-income individuals, people with disabilities and senior citizens are among the groups of people that are eligible for Medicaid.
Medicaid is the largest program of its kind in America, and is funded by state and the federal governments. Although there are federal guidelines, every state has its own programs. This allows Gov. Deval Patrick to set the rates for which the state government is required to reimburse medical centers.
BMC and the Quincy Medical Center have been part of an agreement under which BMC has provided doctors and subsidies to QMC since the late 1990s, QMC spokeswoman Janice Sullivan said. The centers agreed last spring that BMC would discontinue further subsidies by the end of June 2009 as part of a three-year extension of its clinical services agreement.
QMC follows in BMC’s footsteps by serving a largely underprivileged and low-income community and now faces challenges because of Medicaid cuts, Sullivan said.
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‘We are struggling,’ Sullivan said. ‘Quincy Medical Center will have to make some tough decisions.’
‘Now we need to sit back and determine what is the next step,’ she said.
More than one million people are currently covered by Medicaid in Massachusetts, and because of the recession, even more residents will qualify for its services, Boston University health policy and management professor Alan Sager said.
More residents will be seeking Medicaid, but the state will have less funding for the program, Sager said.
‘If say, Cambridge Health Alliance continues to suffer this large reduction, it would have less capacity to employ care,’ Sager said.’ ‘That reduction in capacity will most definitely hurt Medicaid patients.”
The state’s proposed cuts to Medicaid are not smart ways to save money even though Massachusetts’ health care costs are among the highest in the nation, Sager said.
Jeff Hall, the health care workers’ union 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East spokesman, said he thinks state needs to restore Medicaid funding.
In the current recession, more people than ever are going to utilize the emergency and preventative services BMC offers to those with Medicaid, Hall said.’
‘Boston Medical Center serves a unique population of underprivileged and low-income residents in Boston,’ Hall said. ‘Now is not the time for the state to reduce funding.
‘When these jobs are lost, the impact to patients is going to be severe and rapid,’ he said.
Medicaid coverage is particularly troublesome when the economy slides downward, Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute Executive Director Anya Wallack said.
‘The state’s revenue goes down at the exact point in time that people are losing their health coverage and enrollment in Medicaid goes up,’ Wallack said.
However, President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed federal stimulus package may include healthcare assistance, she said.
Healthcare workers from BMC and the Cambridge Health Alliance, which has also been affected by reimbursement cuts for the 2009 fiscal year, are already calling for the state administration to restore services, Hall, the union spokesman, said. However, they have not received an answer about how patients will be served after cuts take place.
Vivian Ho contributed reporting to this article.
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