Saying they are in financial peril, Oregon hospital systems are fighting bills that would increase their costs while pleading for more than $1 billion a year in help from the recently convened state legislature.
Lawmakers face the tricky task of balancing any assistance against competing demands from labor unions, such as increasing nurse-staffing ratios to slow burnout and improve patient care, according to The Lund Report.
Hospitals claim a high-profile nurse-staffing bill modeled on California’s law would prompt them to close beds rather than increase staff.
Oregon hospitals’ requests for assistance run from modest to gigantic. The biggest: Hospitals want the state to boost how much it pays them to treat the Oregon Health Plan’s 1.4 million patients. That increase could easily top $1 billion a year. Hospitals also want the state to pay them a yet-to-be-set amount per day for boarding many hundreds of patients who are ready to be discharged and produce little revenue, but for whom there is no space at nursing homes or rehab centers. On the less costly end, they want the state to pay hospitals for hosting nursing students on clinical rotations.
Those are just a few items from the wish list of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, the industry’s trade group. Read more.
