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Hospitals urge continued supplemental funding for private psychiatric beds and sustained Medicaid rate increases
Summary
Hospital leaders and Ascension Via Christi asked the committee to continue and expand supplemental payments that support private inpatient behavioral-health beds and to sustain recent Medicaid rate increases to keep rural and specialty beds open.
Hospital leaders, behavioral-health providers and Ascension Via Christi asked the Committee on Social Services Budget to continue supplemental funding for inpatient psychiatric beds and to sustain recent Medicaid rate increases to prevent further bed closures and to mitigate operating losses for behavioral-health services.
Jennifer Goring, chief nursing officer at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph in Wichita, told the committee her hospital accounts for about 30 percent of the state's public inpatient behavioral-health beds outside the state hospital system and reported monthly volumes of behavioral-health patients from across roughly 70 counties. Goring said the hospital provided $62 million in community benefit in the previous fiscal year and has sustained financial losses for behavioral health that ranged on average "from $3.5 to $6.2 million" annually. She asked the committee to continue and increase the supplemental funding that supported private inpatient behavioral-health capacity, and to approve a $15 million supplemental request in testimony.
Tara Mays of the Kansas Hospital Association thanked the committee for prior-year investments that helped reduce the share of hospitals starting the year with negative operating margins (from 73 percent to 67 percent) and urged continued momentum on Medicaid rate adjustments. Mays also highlighted ancillary asks including continuation of the rural hospital innovation grant program, support for the provider assessment used to draw federal match, and consideration of a centralized credentialing system for MCOs to reduce administrative costs. She also shared preliminary data from a hospital survey reporting 10,713 avoidable inpatient days among responding hospitals, which hospitals estimated equated to about $8.5 million in uncompensated or avoidable-cost days for those hospitals.
Witnesses said supplemental Medicaid support has helped keep beds open and urged the committee not to let prior appropriations lapse. Committee members asked for additional data on avoidable days and on the projected fiscal impact of the requested supplemental funding.
No committee votes were recorded during the testimony.
