Washington state is one of 43 or so that face cuts in reimbursement from emergency room visits. Beginning April 1, if patients are diagnosed with any one of 500 diagnoses, Washington’s Medicaid program won’t pay physicians or hospitals. An excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
Instead, the state will pay a screening fee of about $50 if the patient is in a private-plan version of Medicaid, which currently enrolls about 60% of beneficiaries and is slated to grow. Patients won’t be charged.
The move would be the latest cut to Medicaid programs as states struggle to reduce health-care costs—and as the downturn has boosted Medicaid’s ranks. Some 43 states have Medicaid initiatives designed to deter unnecessary use of emergency rooms, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that studies health issues. Several states now charge patients copays for nonemergency services in an ER.
The Washington policy is being watched by other states, said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan research organization.
WSJ reports that doctors and hospitals in the state successfully blocked an earlier version of the plan. Even without reimbursement, hospital ERs and doctors must treat certain injuries, and some describe the treatment as doing “unpaid work.”