State News
Nursing homes lose money
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FarkSIOUX FALLS (AP) — A new study shows that South Dakota nursing homes will lose nearly $23 a day this year on Medicaid patients, threatening long-term care in the state.
About 65 percent of patients are on Medicaid at many South Dakota nursing homes.
The federal government pays about two-thirds of the cost of the program for the poor, leaving the remaining third to states. Only three other states lose more per patient.
In the past five years, nursing homes in Dell Rapids, Letcher and Parker have closed in part because of the Medicaid funding gap, Mark Deak, executive director of the South Dakota Health Care Association, said.
The state-federal Medicaid program, which covers health expenses for the poor, underfunds nursing homes about $4.5 billion nationally — $1 billion more than five years ago, according to BDO Seidman, a Madison, Wis.-based accounting company, which did the study for the American Health Care Association.
In South Dakota and other historically low-tax states, money for Medicaid is sparse because the state has to spread a tight budget over several programs.
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