New Jersey Hospitals

NJ hospitals in dire straits after charity budget cuts

Anne Zieger — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:37:45 -0400

While hospitals in every state are struggling to fund charity care and bad debt, things in New Jersey are particularly bad. Not only does the state have 1.3 million people without insurance--and a law in place requiring hospitals to treat anyone who visits--but also, the state now faces major cuts in the funding that paid for these impoverished patients. Gov. Jon Corzine (D) recently signed a state budget that cut $111 million from the charity care fund. Now, hospitals that were already struggling are facing even worse problems.

Hospitals say that the stage was set for the hospitals' financial weakness well before the charity cuts, in part due to patients cherry-picking from ambulatory surgery centers. Now, with half of the state's hospitals operating in the red, observers and hospital leaders expect to see many more closures.

These closures are particularly likely to occur in communities populated by high numbers of poor patients--the ones who will find it most difficult to transfer to another hospital. For example, Plainsfield, NJ-based Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center--which serves a poor, ethnically-mixed community--has begun the process of closing down its acute care beds after operating continuously for 130 years. It lost $16.8 million last year and expects to lose another $18 million in 2008.

To learn about the hospitals' troubles:
- read this Washington Post piece

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Study: Care at safety net hospitals lagging

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Care at safety net hospitals is of significantly lower quality than hospitals that don't serve the poor and underserved, according to a new study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, which looked at data collected between 2004 and 2006 from 3,665 safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals, concluded that hospitals serving a low percentage of Medicaid patients had far more improvement in quality over time than safety-net facilities.

For example, while safety-net hospitals improved heart attack care by 2.3 percentage points, hospitals treating a low volume of Medicaid patients improved heart attack care by 3.8 percentage points, researchers said. Generally speaking, hospitals with a high volume of Medicaid patients saw CMS quality ratings drop from 10.1 percent in 2004 to 2.8 percent in 2006, while non-safety-net hospital ratings climbed from 13.6 percent to 19.7 percent.

To address this gap, the government should offer safety-net hospitals funding specifically targeted to improving care quality, rather than focusing solely on what levels they've already achieved, researchers said.

To learn more about the study:
- read this HealthDay News piece

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NJ governor mulls fast-food tax to fund hospitals

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

While no other state has successfully pulled it off, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine (D) said he's willing to consider a tax on fast food to offset budget cuts that have hit hospitals hard. Corzine has proposed $2.7 billion in cuts to the state budget, including a 14 percent cut in state aid to hospitals. The cut could pose a threat to state hospitals, half of which lost money last year, advocates say. Six New Jersey hospitals have closed in the last 18 months alone. Now Corzine has dubbed the notion of a fast-food tax, recommended by one hospital, a "constructive suggestion."

The question is whether such a tax would work out. To date, no state or municipality has enacted such a tax, partly because it hits lower-income citizens hardest. Not only that, critics contend that such a tax would raise little money, given consumer cutbacks in spending. State citizens already pay the highest taxes in the U.S. on cigarettes, money that funds health programs.

To learn more about the proposal:
- read this Associated Press piece

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