As our state legislators negotiate the Illinois budget for FY 2008, we ask that they include increased funding for nursing home residents on Medicaid, one of our state’s most dependent populations.

The Illinois nursing home community is in need of additional funding to provide high quality services to its residents. Currently, it costs the average Illinois nursing home $127 per day to care for its residents while it is only reimbursed for 76 percent of its costs.

Nursing homes today provide many services that were once only provided in hospitals, such as ventilator management, dialysis and wound care. These facilities have a new reimbursement system called the MDS that recognizes these medically advanced services, but the state implemented the system without fully funding it. Funding this system is critical to optimizing the quality of care, safety and well being for our residents.

Medicaid currently pays nursing homes based on cost levels from 1999 while their costs for taxes, food, staffing and utilities continue to steadily rise. The state needs to update Medicaid rates to reflect current costs.

Our state has a moral obligation to provider quality care to its nursing home residents. We hope that the General Assembly will fully consider the needs of their districts’ most fragile residents when the final state budget is being negotiated in Springfield.

Louise Bergthold
Chair
Illinois Council on Long Term Care

Robert Hedges
President
Illinois Health Care Association