MedCity morning read Tuesday, Feb. 3

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland will try to plug some of the financial gaps in his new budget by charging hospitals a new franchise fee as well as increasing a tax on nursing homes, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

The new hospital franchise fee would charge hospitals $598 million over the next two years, although the net cost to hospitals is $200 million, Tiffany Himmelreich, spokeswoman for the Ohio Hospital Association, told The Dispatch. That’s because the state wants to increase its reimbursement rate for Medicaid patients by 5 percent.

“The economy is bad for the state, but the economy is just as bad for hospitals,” Himmelreich told the newspaper.

Nursing homes would pay a total $298 million in two years after a doubling of the “bed tax,” which charges a fee per day per bed. Alan Melamed, spokesman for the Skilled Nursing Care Coalition, predicted such an increase would bankrupt some facilities and lead others to cut staff.

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