Statewide emergency budget cuts totaling $102 million will hit Connecticut hospitals the hardest. They will bear nearly two-thirds of those cuts, including a nearly $1 million cut to Greenwich Hospital.
As part of Gov. Dannel Malloy’s plan to ease state budget woes, $63.4 million of the total cuts will be reductions in Medicaid reimbursements to the state’s hospitals. However, because matching federal reimbursement packages totaling around $128 million would also be lost, the overall loss to state hospitals would come to $192 million.
“This new round of cuts is pretty devastating to the entire hospital community throughout the state of Connecticut,” said Norman Roth, president of Greenwich Hospital, the town’s largest private employer.
“While the rhetoric out of Hartford is that hospitals have a good operating margin, we pay twice as much in state taxes as we make in earnings. With this $63 million cut in this last rescission, Connecticut hospitals are also forgoing $128 million of matching funds from the federal government.”
Malloy’s administration says the cuts are needed because of low projections of tax revenue.
Now hospitals will have to consider changing benefit structures, closing programs, and in some cases, staff elimination.
State Sen. Scott Frantz (R-Greenwich) says the cuts aimed at hospitals will be felt throughout the economy and by people who need the hospitals’ care the most.
“The cuts, along with the original hospital taxes that have been implemented in the past couple of years, are going to be, have been, and continue to be devastating for nearly every hospital in the state of Connecticut,” Frantz said.
Frantz says that Greenwich Hospital has experienced cutbacks in several programs. “It deals a big blow to Greenwich Hospital and hospitals all around the state.”
Of the 29 Connecticut hospitals, estimates of payment elimination in the last three quarters of the fiscal year have reached over $20 million each in total impact for Hartford Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Cuts to Stamford Hospital in the same nine-month timeframe have reached $7.7 million, while Norwalk Hospital is facing a $6.3 million loss of payments. Stamford Hospital recently let go 20 of its employees along with cuts to community programs in the wake of these budget cuts.
“There was a promise made to hospitals by the state several years ago that they would be helped financially because health care for the people in this state is vitally important,” Frantz said in a statement last week. “Those promises have been broken time and time again by this administration. The cumulative effect of those cuts will result in job losses and restricted care for vulnerable patients. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join Republicans in the call for a special session so that we may prioritize and restore these harmful cuts.”
The new fiscal year for Greenwich Hospital, starting Thursday, brings the cost of $198 per every Medicaid case, regardless of whether the case is inpatient or outpatient, according to Roth.
“We used to get at least some money back, but now we’re just paying into the state, and so now we’re subsidizing the state of Connecticut for caring for the most vulnerable patients,” Roth said.
For now, none of the programs at Greenwich Hospital have been eliminated, though some have lost funds. Roth says that while Greenwich Hospital employees will receive normal merit increases (averaging 3 percent) this upcoming fiscal year, it will become harder to balance an already thin budget in the future.
“I expect next year to be tougher than this year,” he said. “I feel empathy for every other hospital organization and the decisions that they are making to make their budgets work. It’s really heart wrenching to see where some hospitals are positioned today.”
