He Wanted to Fix Rural America's Broken Nursing Homes. Now, Taxpayers May Be on the Hook for $76M
Nearly 20 years ago, Ronnie Rollins walked out of a hotel in Macon, Georgia, with an idea that he believed might lead the state’s struggling rural nursing homes to financial salvation.
State health officials had just told a conference filled with industry players about a federal program that would dramatically increase payments for care provided to nursing home residents. But there was a catch: To obtain the bonus money, the nursing home had to be owned by a public agency affiliated with a hospital.
Rollins owned a chain of nursing homes and didn’t seem to qualify for the program. But he dreamed up a workaround. His company had partnered with development authorities, which are designed to attract new businesses and jobs to counties, to secure tax-exempt bonds for its nursing homes. Rollins believed he could convince development authority officials to use their agencies to apply for those bonus payments from Medicaid. The idea hinged on convincing the federal government that the owners of the nursing homes were those agencies. Not his chain.
It was an unorthodox idea, he knew, one that pushed the limits of the law, and so Rollins asked Georgia’s Department of Community Health for an opinion. After a “healthy debate,” according to one former top official, DCH approved Rollins’ plan — so long as the department received a cut of the bonus payments. Department officials hoped to use the money to help stabilize Medicaid reimbursement rates for providers across the state.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/he-wanted-to-fix-rural-americas-broken-nursing-homes-now-taxpayers-may-be-on-the-hook-for-76-million