FLASHBACK (12/31/2011): Cuts to Medicaid Crossover Fees Has Negative Impact on half of states and especially Older Texans, Providers, and the State Budget
State law 354.1041-354.1149 awards power to HHSC to diminish the Medicaid crossover installment down to the Medicaid permitted fees. This misfortune will affect elderly people, particularly the defenseless nursing home population. The impact will be a decrease in access to care, which is negative to patients, suppliers, and the state spending plan and economy. * Rates for mental health administrations have been quickly declining subsequent to 2006. Medicare permitted expenses for psychotherapy administrations have been diminished somewhere around 17% and 7% since 2006. The proposed rate drop this year for Texas crossover charges would advance most expenses for mental health care by an extra 25-21%. With the officially acknowledged losses in the previous 5 years, the aggregate expense cuts would be somewhere around 36% and 22%! * No profession can absorb such severe fee reductions. These cuts will inevitably cause providers to minimize or completely eliminate services to dually eligible patients. The loss of income to providers has a further negative impact on the state economy. * Elderly patients will have significantly less access to mental health care as providers will have to find alternative means of income. * Mental health services help patients maintain compliance and cooperation with medical treatments such as management of diabetes, participation in physical and occupational therapies, and assistance in wound care. A loss of mental health services to elderly patients, especially nursing home residents, will ultimately result in more costly medical services, for which Medicaid will have to pay. * Loss of mental health services will have an especially detrimental and costly effect on patients who are receiving skilled nursing home / rehabilitation services.These patients are receiving intensive inpatient rehab services often with the goal of returning home.Without the supportive services of mental health, which keeps these patients actively compliant with their treatments, many will fail at their treatment goals, will not be able to return home, and will have to remain in nursing homes, at great cost to the state Medicaid system. |