New Series Examines Impact on Minorities of “Flawed Scheme” for Funding Long-Term Care (Part 1)
This Blog has followed the complicated recent history of bankrupt Lemington Home for the Aged, in Pittsburgh, with posts here and here. New America Media, a national association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations, has begun an important, multi-part series examining the “impoverished history of race” in long-term care for persons of color. The Lemington Home becomes a case study. The series is titled The Death of a Black Nursing Home.
“[W]hat happened to Lemington is not uncommon. Researchers at Brown University found that more than 600 other nursing homes in African American, Hispanic and low-income neighborhoods also went bankrupt during this period.
Their study examined the closings of more than 1,700 independent nursing homes between 1999-2009 and found that those located in largely ethnic and low-income communities were more likely to have been closed, mostly because of financial difficulties.
Specifically, nursing homes in the zip codes with the highest percentage of blacks and Latinos were more than one-third more likely to be closed, and the risk of closure in zip codes with the highest level of poverty was more than double that of those in zip codes with the lowest poverty rate.”
Observing that “Medicaid homes can’t compete” successfully, the article examines reimbursement rates under Medicare and Medicaid and the disproportionate effect of underfunding on minority communities.
“The principal authors of the study, Vincent Mor and Zhanlian Feng, both of Brown at the time (Feng is now at the Research Triangle Institute), noted ‘closures were more likely to occur among facilities in states providing lower Medicaid nursing home reimbursement rates.’ That left these homes without the resources they needed to compete successfully in an industry experiencing an oversupply of beds and intensified competition….
While Medicaid reimbursement rates vary by state, they are always below Medicare’s reimbursement levels or the fees charged to people who pay for their own care. The demise of Lemington and other nursing homes in minority and low-income neighborhoods is a direct result of this flawed payment scheme. However, large for-profit nursing home chains, some of which are owned by private equity companies and real estate investment trusts, can maximize profits by using expensive and aggressive marketing practices to cherry pick the wealthier residents in a given area while reducing the number of their own Medicaid clients.
Medicaid’s payment structure also has impacted the quality of care in nursing homes with predominantly minority residents.”
We will link to the next parts of the series as they become available.