Quality And Cost Concerns Collide With Efforts To Lower Overall Healthcare Costs
Burden Will Fall On Families With Elderly Parents
The efforts to contain the health cost curve is really about controlling the cost of post-acute care. Half of post-acute Medicare dollars go to Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), and half of all Medicaid spending goes toward paying for nursing home care as well. These payments continue even as there are continuing lapses in quality of care despite coordinated Federal efforts.
Many poor performing nursing facilities are willing or able to correct problems they’ve been cited for. Nursing shortages are having a widespread impact on quality of care. Promises are being broken and regulatory systems seem unable to fix the problem.
But will less money, as proposed in the on-again-off-again American Health Care Act just exacerbate an already stressed system?
Learn more about this topic:
- Poor Patient Care at Many Nursing Homes Despite Stricter Oversight (New York Times)
- Estimated Financial Effect of the “American Health Care Act of 2017
(Dept of Health & Human Serivces, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) - Post-Acute Care — The Next Frontier For Controlling Medicare Spending
(New England Journal of Medicine)