Letter: Hospitals should be ashamed

<p><strong>To the editor:</strong></p><p>Should I feel informed or be outraged—or both—after reading a recent report? Supplemental Medicaid funding intended for nursing homes was diverted to county hospitals. Maybe as much as $3 billion.</p><p>Indiana hospitals received more supplement Medicaid funding than any other state in the nation, yet we have some of the worse nursing homes in America.</p><p>Hospital administrators and boards found a loophole and some knew or were told that this could be considered a little shady. Yet they bought nursing homes, even outside their close proximity, raked in an extra $679 million last year alone, but siphoned most of the money away from the nursing homes.</p><p>County hospitals own 93% of the 534 nursing homes in Indiana. Johnson Memorial Hospital owns 34. Before the arrival of the Golden Goose, only nine nursing homes were owned by county hospitals.</p><p>Many experts and organizations rank nursing homes in Indiana at the bottom or near the bottom nationally. Medicaid was supplementing these nursing homes to improve care. But most of the money was used by county hospitals to build new additions or completely new hospitals, clinics and other services not directly benefiting nursing home residents.</p><p>Bottom line: The winners were county hospital administrators and boards. The losers were nursing home residents and taxpayers.</p><p>Some county hospital boards and administrators should be apologizing to taxpayers and nursing home residents for taking advantage of the Golden Goose. But that apology will never come.</p><p>Some county hospitals should be returning millions of dollars that were not used for intended purposes. But those millions will never be returned.</p><p>Now it appears that some state and federal officials may attempt to correct these injustices. One hospital / nursing home group that could lose millions wrote an 80-page letter to officials crying foul.</p><p>Nursing home residents and taxpayers don’t need 80 pages. Eight words express our feelings: &quot;Foul! You should be out of the game!&quot;</p><p><p><strong>Dick Huber</strong></p><p><p><strong>Greenwood</strong></p>