Gov't health care to cost an Ohio Hospital millions

BY ED GEBERT, Times Bulletin News Writer

6/9/2010

The new health care legislation could end up costing Van Wert County Hospital more than $5 million. That’s the word from VWCH President/CEO Mark Minick. On Tuesday evening, Minick spoke to the Heart Land Patriots about the effects of the newly-passed law on the health care system.

“Basically, the bottom line is that we will see a reduction in payment of about $5.9 million and new revenues from gaining the uninsured of about $2.1 million. So it would actually have an impact on the hospital of about $3.7 million negative over ten years,” declared Minick.

In addition, the hospital will also lose money through the federal stimulus program with funds designed to bring hospitals on board with using electronic medical records. While dollars will be given by the government to comply, Minick pointed out that the hospital will have to spend more money to get into compliance than it will receive.

“So when we look at the hospital and we look at the $3.4 million dollars in incentive payments, we also have a projected five-year expenditure of about $5 million in order to achieve that,” he shared.

If the hospital would choose not to comply, Washington would simply cut the organization’s Medicaid reimbursement. Thus, between the health care legislation and the stimulus package, VWCH will be losing around $5.3 million over the next ten years. That estimate could go even higher, if health care growth does not occur as suggested by the Obama administration.

As for where that money would come from, Minick could only speculate. “The whole industry is going to be looking at ways to cut costs, to save dollars,” he said. “A lot of that is probably going to go the way of labor productivity, information service technology we hope will be saving dollars… We will be using evidence-based paths, I think there will be eventually tighter restrictions on experimental treatments and clinical trials. I think technology, which we’ve seen move very rapidly in this country, is going to slow down because the dollars are not going to be there for reimbursement.”

According to Minick, the new laws could also further increase shortages of physicians in the country, causing more patient needs to be met by physician’s assistants or nurse practitioners. The increase in paperwork and reduction of Medicare reimbursement could also cause some doctors to consider an earlier retirement.

He observed, “I don’t think it’s going to change the dedication of physicians or the dedication of caregivers. I think it will change their level of frustration!”

In his remarks and through the question and answer period, Minick gave his opinions and shared the thoughts of others. He described the changes in the reimbursement payment and its similarities to the health maintenance organizations of the 1990s.

Minick also predicted there would end up being some type of rationed care to control costs. “It is fairly certain that what the government is going to do is they are going to legislate the dollars, then the delivery system is going to have to figure out how to deliver care with that fixed number of dollars. That’s how they intend to execute delivery system reform.”

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