Federal officials are pressing Ohio regulators to resolve a backlog of more than 70,000 applications for Medicaid benefits.
State officials are now working with counties to diagnose and devise a strategy to address the issue.
Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, said members contact him daily about the issue. Nursing homes have been beset by cash flow crunches and uncertainty regarding whether care will be reimbursed, he added.
“I don’t really know what precipitated the federal scrutiny, but if that results in an improvement in the situation four our members, that’s great. We’d be all for that,” he told McKnight’s Monday.
OHCA is pushing for a statutory amendment that would create presumptive Medicaid eligibility for long-term care patients in cases where federal timeframes aren’t being met. That amendment has been floated in the House but there is talk of it being removed, Van Runkle said. The law change is fashioned after a similar one in Illinois.
“Our proposal would actually create a hammer where, if the county doesn’t do its job, then something definite happens,” he said.
Ohio officials are now working with Franklin and other larger counties to figure out the source of application delays, the Columbus Dispatch reported Monday. At one point last year, the backlog climbed as high as 110,000. Federal guidelines require that applications be processed within 45 days for most requests.
