Oklahoma’s Medicaid providers are about to get hit with what will effectively be a 20% loss in funding now that supplemental funds have ceased with the end of the public health emergency.
Skilled nursing facilities had been receiving an extra $36 per resident per day through the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, but the final payment was made earlier this month, said Steve Buck, CEO of Care Providers Oklahoma. The projected cost of care as of July 1 will be $246 per day, but without the supplemental funding, providers will receive just $189 per resident per day, Buck said.
“The cost of labor in the skilled nursing profession has risen astronomically in the last two years,” Buck wrote in an email to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News last week. “We’ve already seen facilities unable to keep up with skyrocketing costs that have been forced to close. We have got to get funding levels up to the point where they are at least covering the cost of care. If we cannot, there will be mass closures.”
The prospects for SNF funding are tied up in a massive budget fight over school money between Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) and the Legislature. Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Steven Taylor has been pulled in to act as a mediator because the sides have been “so divided,” according to local news reports. However, the local Oklahoman reported that the chair of the House budget committee on health said he’s “optimistic” the state will come up with enough funding to fill the gap for nursing homes.
The state has lost at least 12 long-term care facilities since 2020.
In March, Buck wrote an opinion column for The Oklahoman in which he noted that legislation approved in 2019 “tied a significant funding increase” to improvements in facility residents’ weight loss, percentages of residents on antipsychotics, those with urinary tract infections, and those with pressure ulcers. He noted that in all categories, residents’ health markedly improved. Those results “paint a compelling picture,” he said, arguing for more funding and assistance with the workforce crisis.
