Tuesday, April 5, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A Senate bill that would redirect money to three private hospitals in Clark County would drain $98.9 million from University Medical Center's budget, county officials said Monday.
In a replay of past battles, UMC lined up against Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in a tug-of-war before the Senate Committee on Human Resources & Education that will decide the issue April 13.
Ann Lynch and George Ross, representing Sunrise, told the committee that money distributed by the state should be allocated to hospitals based on the number of poor patients they are treating.
According to the Sunrise representatives, 19.5 percent of patients treated at Sunrise are low income as are 52 percent of patients at North Vista Hospital and 27 percent of the patients at Valley Hospital Medical Center. At UMC, 39 percent of the patients are low income, Lynch and Ross said.
Lynch said the "changing demographics" in Clark County have Sunrise taking care of more lower-income patients. The hospital is now in a district where there are multiple families living in one apartment and there is a high crime rate, she said. The major occupation in the area, she said, is selling drugs.
She also said there are a large number of illegal immigrants, who seldom have health care or earn high wages, living in the neighborhoods around Sunrise.
But Mike Alastuey, representing UMC, said the privately owned Sunrise is pushing for the funding because it "wants to enrich its shareholders outside of Nevada."
Under the proposed realignment in Senate Bill 281, Sunrise would get an extra $19.9 million over the next two years, North Vista would receive an additional $50.9 million and Valley Hospital Medical Center would get an additional $27.6 million.
At present, Clark County kicks in $54.2 million to the state to be used to match the federal government's program to reimburse hospitals that provide a disproportionate amount of medical care to citizens that cannot pay.
The state keeps $20.1 million of the $54.2 to put into the Medicaid program. And the rest is used as a federal match. Under the formula approved by the 2003 Legislature, Sunrise does not get any money to pay for care of poor patients. North Vista is now receiving about $1.2 million a year and Valley does not receive any of the federal matching funds.
Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, the committee chairman and supporter of the redistribution of the money, said this bill would distribute the money to where the poor patients are being treated.
"This is a simple formula and the dollars should follow the patients," said Washington.
But Alastuey said that Sunrise gets reimbursed from Medicaid and from Social Security for many of the poor patients it treats. UMC, on the other hand, lost $15 million last year partly because it treated patients that did not have any money to pay the bill and were not covered by any government program.
This bill, Alastuey said, "adds insult to injury."
"UMC should be protected" because it is a county hospital, and Clark County kicks in the money to qualify for the federal match, so the formula should not be changed, he said.
Lynch countered that "my tax dollars should follow the patient and not be donated in one place."
Bob Ostrowsky, representing North Vista Hospital, noted his hospital would be a major benefactor of the bill in receiving $50.9 million in the next two years instead of $2.5 million. However, he said, "we would love to have a windfall profit but not at the expense of UMC."
The bill would also cause some rural hospitals to lose money, such as Northerneastern Nevada Regional Hospital in Elko that would come up $591,653 short in the next two years.
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