Snyder Nursing School under construction in 2006.
This past Friday, I gave a tip 'o the hat to Assemblyman Jerry Green for getting two out of three of his 'Christmas Tree' wishes. One of those was for $9M in charity care funding for Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center. So far, so good.
Then came the Sunday Ledger's overview of hospital charity care funding statewide.
That's when the shocks came. First, that Muhlenberg's funding ACTUALLY WENT DOWN by $67,153. OK, times are tough. Everybody has to chip in a little, right?
Wrong!
JFK, Muhlenberg's partner in the Solaris Health System, got a whopping 41% increase. What's that about?
True, Muhlenberg got more dollars. But how is it that leafy-green-suburb JFK gets an increase, when Muhlenberg is nearly overwhelmed with charity care costs and posts an annual deficit on their account?
Glancing through the complete table in the Ledger's print edition, there were other nearby hospitals that posted significant percentage increases (see table below).
| FY2008 CHARITY CARE FUNDING (Selected Hospitals) | ||||
| HOSPITAL | FY2007 | FY2008 | DIFFERENCE | % CHANGE |
| Muhlenberg RMC | $9,409,343 | $9,342,190 | ($67,153) | -0.7% |
| JFK | $998,069 | $1,408,990 | $410,921 | +41.2% |
| Somerset MC | $1,153,140 | $1,690,190 | $537,050 | +46.6% |
| RWJ - Rahway | $911,583 | $1,024,871 | $113,288 | +12.4% |
| St. Peter's | $2,758,370 | $3,058,087 | $299,717 | +10.9% |
As the Ledger notes --
The bottom line: $716 million in charity care aid, $133 million more than Corzine's original budget.
But hospitals say it is still $900 million short of what they actually spend to treat more than 300,000 uninsured patients each year. ...
"Our industry is really straining under this current system," said Betsy Ryan, chief operating officer for the New Jersey Hospital Association. "We have 50 percent of the hospitals operating in the red, three in bankruptcy in the past two years, a couple of applications for closures and more rumored ones coming. We think it really needs reform."
New Jersey hospitals have been legally required to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay since 1971.
Meanwhile, Sunday's story follows Saturday's about a report on the rationalization of hospital funding, which
gives Gov. Jon Corzine guidelines to determine which [hospitals] are the most essential and economically viable, rather than allowing politics to continue to influence how millions of dollars in state aid are distributed. ...
Urban hospitals are often the most economically stressed because the population has shifted to the suburbs, said Donald Malafronte, head of the Urban Health Institute in Roseland, a hospital consulting firm.
"Yes, reimbursement is an issue, but it's hard for these hospitals to keep a big institution going and infrastructure in a town that is emptying itself and leaving behind concentrations of uninsured patients," he said.
The Legislature hopes to address the problem --
Lawmakers concede this year's charity care plan is a stopgap solution until they can devise a universal health care plan to reduce New Jersey's estimated 1.2 million uninsured residents.But nothing the lawmakers do ever happens overnight. The question becomes how many hospitals will go under before something is done.
By the next budget year, leading Democrats hope to roll out a plan that could provide uninsured residents with coverage so they do not have to use hospital emergency rooms for basic care.
"Charity care at some point should go away," said Assembly Budget Chairman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden). "The hospital industry and the health care of our citizens should not be based on this reimbursement. It should be based on getting people insured."
Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) said he intends to introduce a bill when the Legislature returns in the fall that would phase in universal health coverage -- first by expanding the state-run FamilyCare program, which already insures 214,000 working poor people.
"We're treading water until we get (universal health care)," Vitale said. "This is something that will happen, but it will happen over time."
For Plainfield, the issue has a further impact as Muhlenberg is the city's largest employer.
Anything that endangers Muhlenberg also endangers the community as a whole.
A point that should have City Hall bureaucrats worried.
Snyder Nursing School under construction in 2006.
Background --
- Ledger - Sunday - 7/1/2007: "Hospitals: Rise in aid for poor falls short"
- Ledger - Saturday - 6/30/2007: "Value of N.J. hospitals outlined by commission"
- Report: "New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources"
-- Dan Damon
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