CONCORD — The Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee this week tabled a package of measures negotiated by Commissioner of Health and Human Services Nick Toumpas and the New Hampshire Hospital Association designed to help close the mounting state budget deficit, which could cost LRGHealthcare $500,000 during the first six months of this year. In February, the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee approved Toumpas’s proposal to trim reimbursements to New Hampshire hospitals for treating Medicaid patients by $7-million. Henry Lipman, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of LRGH, estimated the the cuts could cost his non-profit company as much as $750,000 before the end of the state fiscal year on June 30. The hospital association countered with a package of equivalent savings that would spare reducing Medicaid reimbursement rates. Last month Toumpas agreed to some but not all the association’s counter-offer and recommended reducing the Medicaid reimbursement rate for out-patients by 23-percent, from 81-cents to 62-cents on each dollar of allowable costs. Moreover, the reduction would be retroactive to January 1, 2008. Leslie Melby, vice-president of state government relations for the association, said that the rate reduction will cost the hospitals $6.6-million, $3.3-million in state funding and an equal amount in federal matching money. Lipman said that the cuts would cost LRGH at least $500,000. “That is a pretty significant number,” he said, “twice our net income in the first quarter of (fiscal year) 2008, which began November 1, and 16-percent of our operating margin of 2.4-percent in 2007.” He said that it appears that as a so-called “critical care hospital,” Franklin Regional Hospital would be spared the rate reduction, but if it is not LRGH would incur another $235,000 in cuts, bringing the total impact to near $750,000. Moreover, Lipman stressed that “this is not just a one year issue. We are anticipating further and probably deeper cuts in 2009.”
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