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Nursing facilities might seek ‘fee’ to reverse funding cuts

• Published June 01, 2009

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I didn't get into it the Sunday story about the coming cuts to healthcare programs, but the state's nursing home industry might seek a fee increase for nursing beds in January.

The goal: Blunt the effect of the state budget cuts, which are compounded by a parallel cut in matching federal dollars.

Customers would pay the higher fee. By raising state funds collected and earmarked for nursing homes and assisted living centers, nursing home operators would see a larger federal Medicaid match, boosting the amount of money overall that goes into the nursing homes.

"I think we're going to be talking to the Legislature about it," Lauri St. Ours, director of government affairs for the Washington Health Care Association, tells me. "With nine months of unsustainable budget cuts under our belts by the time January rolls around, it probably will be an idea worth revisiting."

This would be a trip down memory lane. Lawmakers did the same thing in 2003 when Brendan Williams (then head of WHCA, but now a 'progressive' Democrat in the state House) proposed a bed tax for nursing homes. Williams later renounced the fee as the Republican "Dino Rossi bed tax" after lawmakers of both parties used some of the new revenue to replace or supplant nursing home funding shifts to other purposes.

St. Ours used the term "nursing home quality maintenance fee." She said it could erase some of the effect of cutting $37.7 million in state funds, or about $75 million total funding, over the next two years for nursing home care.

St. Ours said the cuts taking effect next month represent a 4 percent reduction, which in her view is not sustainable. The association represents 420 nursing homes and assisted living centers, and there’s bound to be a debate in the association over the fee.

I talked to one local nursing home owner, Burton LeVee, who operates Roo-Lan in Lacey and likes the idea of a fee.

"I am strongly in favor of a quality maintenance fee. It’s a way of bringing additional money to the state of Washington from the federal government," LeVee said this morning.