Published: October 12, 2009 08:02 am      

Healthcare reform may pull plug on hospices

While national polls indicate a general sense of unease over looming national healthcare reform, one local hospice service provider says he sees very specific and dire consequences if healthcare legislation passes in its current form.

“The last nationwide statistics show the average hospice makes 3.4 percent profit. (The Baucus bill) cuts 11.8 percent of hospice Medicare funding,” said Greg McCortney, owner of McCortney Family Hospice in Ada.

McCortney said this cut, combined with the previous cuts from the Bush administration of 4.2 percent will make it extremely difficult for hospices to continue serving clients. “I definitely believe hospices will go out of business,” he said. “If this happens, remaining hospices will look dramatically different.”

This is particularly true of small rural hospices like McCortney’s, he said, because they tend to have fewer patients and drive farther to see them. “Our operating margin is well below the 3.4 percent number, and there have been years when we’ve lost money as a company.



“The only way we can stay in business is to cut back on care. Seventy to eighty percent of our budget is tied to staff. The only way to deal with cuts like this is to lay people off.”



Proposed cuts in hospice funding are tied to presumed improvements in productivity through new and better technology. McCortney said this is unrealistic for his industry.



“One of the things they talk about is electronic medical records, which has great applications for medical doctors’ offices, but for hospices, that doesn’t help us at all. One of our employees spent twenty percent of her time checking on patients in her car, driving 1,000 miles last month. We’re still going to have to drive from house to house. There is no productivity gain in that.



“We’re taking care of terminally ill patients the last few months of their lives,” he said. “Families don’t know what is coming next. Our job is to help people know what’s coming next. These cuts will eliminate our ability to help walk families though the last few months of their parents’ lives.”



McCortney said an amendment that would have exempted hospices from being impacted by proposed funding cuts has been eliminated. “Somehow in the political process that amendment was pulled off the table. It’s all a big political game right now.”