by News Editorial Board
January 9, 2023
At a time when negotiating the public health care labyrinth is more fraught with difficulties than ever, Gov. Kathy Hochul has done the right thing by signing the “Expanded Enhanced Safety Net” bill. This legislation protects Oishei Children’s Hospital from potential Medicaid cuts by adding it to the ranks of safety net health facilities.
As a result of this designation, Children’s Hospital can receive funding from the state to make up for what it loses through inadequate Medicaid reimbursements.
With rates frozen since 2008, Medicaid reimburses hospitals 61 cents for every dollar spent on patient care. At Children’s Hospital, nearly 65% of patients have Medicaid.
While hospitals that serve wealthier communities with large numbers of privately insured patients can make up for this discrepancy, hospitals like Children’s, which provides critical access and health care services to children and mothers in an impoverished community, can’t. In fact, Children’s Hospital had deficits for both 2020 and 2021 and expects to just break even when the 2022 numbers are finalized.
The financial fragility of New York’s hospitals is underscored by several critical indicators, including these:
• 64% of New York State hospitals reported a negative operating margin this year.
• Nationally, nearly 334,000 physicians, nurse practitioners and other clinicians left the workforce in 2021 due to retirement, burnout and pandemic-related stressors.
• There are 36 enhanced safety net hospitals across the state, including Erie County Medical Center, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and now Oishei Children’s Hospital.
With the health care system beset on one side by the lingering pandemic and other respiratory infections that have arisen in its wake, on another by staffing shortages that have reached an all-time high and on yet another by periodic contract disputes, a financial model based on the expectation of profits becomes increasingly unsustainable.
There needs to be a better way to keep institutions such as these, indispensable to our survival, stable in the present and safeguarded into the future.
Until that way is found, Hochul has done what is possible now to protect Children’s Hospital.
The Editorial Board: Oishei Children’s Hospital catches an essential break (buffalonews.com)