The holidays are long over, but we’re still thinking about the guy who wrote “Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer.” 🤔🦌 He must have a huge grudge with his granny. Maybe his cheeks were pinched just a tad too hard? 🤪
Thanks to some bad math, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the state’s Medicaid department to pay nursing homes big money for the mistake. 🧮 Now, four months have gone by but the payments are still missing. 🕵️
Here’s Five Fast Facts on Ohio and nursing homes:
- 🔢 Math Mania - Back in September, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state was using some bogus math to calculate Medicaid payments for nursing homes. In the state’s 2024-25 budget, they underpaid by roughly $527M.
- ⏰ Waiting Game - The court said no to Ohio Medicaid’s request to rethink the case back in November, but the state still hasn’t updated rates or paid up. Because the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision is final, nursing homes may have to count that unpaid Medicaid money as income for tax purposes, even though they haven’t actually received it yet.
- 🤓 Calculation Station - Medicaid covers about 65% of people in Ohio nursing homes, paying facilities a daily rate for each resident. That payment is made up of two parts: the cost of direct care and a quality bonus. The base amount for direct care is supposed to be updated every few years through a process called “rebasing.”
- 🎱 Playing Pool - The quality-incentive pool is like a pie: each nursing home earns points that decide how big its slice is. Lawmakers said Medicaid should put 60% of the increase from rebasing into the pie, but the state calculated that 60% the wrong way, using the price change instead of the direct care rate change.
- 👴🏼 Servin’ Seniors - Caught in the middle of this payment drama are a whole lot of people. Ohio is home to 926 Medicaid-certified nursing facilities that care for an estimated 66,000 people.
🔥Bottom line: Someone get the powers that be a new calculator ASAP! Or maybe, we should send these decision makers back to math camp. Speaking of math problems, if you’re looking for a new way to make some cash through real estate, we’ve got something worth looking at. Head to this article to learn how to bet on a real estate-pocalypse.
Do any of your loved ones live in a nursing home?
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