County seeks more state nursing home funding
As Marathon County officials prepare to tackle next year’s budget, one area of concern looms large in the background – state funding for countyrun nursing homes.
Earlier this year, the county board adopted a resolution calling on legislators to fully restore supplemental payments to county nursing homes using part of the state’s budget surplus, but that did not happen. As a result, Mount View Care Center in Wausau is set to lose nearly $2 million in revenue it normally relies on to meet operating expenses, according to the resolution.
In turn, North Central Health Care (NCHC), which operates Mount View, will be seeking additional funding from the county to make up that shortfall from the state. The county is required to cover the nursing home’s deficits as part of its contract with NCHC.
“Without those supplemental payments, I’ll just be very blunt: The financial impact on North Central is very, very significant,” said county administrator Lance Leonhard at an Aug. 2 meeting of the Health and Human Services Committee (HHSC).
County officials were first made aware of the issue in a March 6 letter from Gary Olsen, NCHC’s executive director, who requested that the county cover an $879,692 loss by Mount View in 2022. If not for the cut in state funding, Olsen said the nursing home “would have ended the year with a gain.”
The reduction in state funding for nursing homes came in two forms – decreases in the Medicaid Supplemental Payment program and Certified Public Expenditure (CPE) payments. The Wisconsin Department of Health Service (DHS) made these cuts without advanced warning for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, leaving many nursing homes scrambling to shore up their calendaryear budgets.
Leonhard noted that NCHC is “an arm of the county,” and one of its functions is to run the county’s nursing home. NCHC also operates Pine Crest Nursing Home in Merrill, but Lincoln County is looking at selling that facility, which would also have an impact on Marathon County, he added. Between the two nursing homes, NCHC is looking at a combined $3.5 million loss in annual state aid.
At their Aug. 2 meeting, members of HHSC discussed ways of getting through to state lawmakers beyond resolutions sent to them by the county board, Lincoln County’s board and the NCHC board in April.
“We need to keep this conversation going, “Leonhard said. “The resolution clearly didn’t have the impact we wanted it to.”
Olsen, who was in attendance at the HHS meeting, said 16 counties were negatively impacted by the change in the state’s supplemental aid formula, so he was expecting more of a “groundswell” of support for adding funding, but that has not been the case.
Leonhard said a possible next step would be to schedule a meeting with State Sen. Cory Tomcyzk and Reps. Pat Snyder and John Spiros at the NCHC campus, to go over the finances with them so they understand the importance of state funding.
Committee members also suggested inviting representatives from Lincoln County and from the governor’s office and the Department of Health Services, which originally made the administrative change to the funding formula. Leonhard said he and Olsen would reach out to the various parties and try to arrange a meeting.
Leonhard said the reduction in supplemental aid will have a major impact on NCHC’s ability to repay its debts, which the county is currently doing while the center tries to improve its finances.
“It was going to be a heavy lift before,” he said. “Without these supplemental payments, the ability to do that is a real challenge.”
At a county board meeting last week, Olsen said the state DHS has $39.1 million available for supplemental payments, but it needs to restore its original funding formula so nursing homes like Mount View can rely on that money for steady income.
“If that’s spread out that way it used to be, we’re going to see a lot more revenue in the budget than we anticipated,” he said. “That would totally change things.”
