WHEELING – WVU Medication Wheeling Hospital, as of July 1, plans to not settle for sufferers inside the West Virginia Public Staff Insurance coverage Company for inpatient care, citing insufficient reimbursement to that hospital and others across the state.
These reimbursement points have hit Wheeling Hospital particularly laborious, in keeping with WVU Medication, which spurred the choice.
PEIA supplies insurance coverage to public faculty lecturers and employees, state corrections staff and different public staff in West Virginia. Wheeling Hospital would nonetheless settle for PEIA sufferers for emergency care, WVU Well being System President and CEO Albert Wright mentioned Thursday. For these PEIA sufferers going by a remedy plan like a being pregnant or chemotherapy, WVU Medication will work with PEIA on a transition plan for a sure time-frame.
However PEIA sufferers is not going to be seen at an urgent-care clinic and never be scheduled for elective surgical procedures, Wright continued. And people PEIA sufferers with docs by Wheeling Hospital must discover a new physician at WVU Medication Reynolds Memorial or one other native hospital.
“We’ve been working with our legislative our bodies over the past couple of years to say, hey guys, PEIA … and I’m going to be blunt … PEIA is masquerading as an insurance coverage firm,” Wright mentioned, “and it actually doesn’t have the infrastructure to be an insurance coverage firm.”
The priority at Wheeling Hospital, which is a part of the WVU Medication group of hospitals within the state, is that reimbursements to out-of-state hospitals dwarf these paid to West Virginia hospitals. In accordance with a PEIA presentation this previous summer time, in 2020, the company paid $47.8 million to out-of-state hospitals for simply 1,903 inpatient visits, whereas paying West Virginia hospitals $42 million for 11,576 visits. In 2021, PEIA paid out-of-state hospitals $57.6 million for two,195 inpatient visits and West Virginia hospitals $56.3 million for 12,313 visits.
PEIA’s common fee for inpatient providers to out-of-state hospitals in 2020 was almost 600% larger than what PEIA paid to West Virginia hospitals for related providers. In 2021, the typical was almost 475% larger.
That discrepancy is particularly damaging to Wheeling Hospital, which has misplaced $56 million over the past three years, Wright mentioned.
“Wheeling is in a novel a part of the state, the place you’ve received Pennsylvania 5 miles to your east and Ohio 5 miles to your west, with hospitals and caregivers which can be getting reimbursed at a lot, a lot larger charges,” Wright mentioned. “So it’s a big inequity. So we needed to make the tough choice to say, hey, we want you, PEIA, to do one thing about this. And in the event you can’t do something about it, we’ve to verify we’re in a position to keep our mission to care for of us.”
In accordance with an announcement launched Thursday afternoon by Gov. Jim Justice’s workplace, he and his employees had been caught flat-footed by the announcement and are “discouraged” by WVU Medication’s place.
“The Justice Administration has been extraordinarily supportive of WVU Medication’s acquisition of Wheeling Hospital,” Justice spokesman C.J. Harvey mentioned in an emailed assertion. “The West Virginia Hospital Affiliation’s announcement right now was a shock to us, as we’re engaged in good religion negotiations – and previous to this announcement right now – had anticipated a decision throughout the upcoming legislative session.”
Some legislative leaders expressed their frustration on the state of affairs – largely that it had been allowed to get so far.
“PEIA has been a difficulty for a few years,” mentioned Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, the Home minority whip. “This was definitely one thing that was foreseeable, given the dire circumstances we face with PEIA, which, in my view, has been largely ignored by present management in Charleston.
“It simply goes to indicate that this ought to be a prime precedence for management,” he continued. “The governor got here out and talked about all these pie-in-the-sky points, which he does frequently, when our hardest-working West Virginians are going through a disaster, which has now reached a disaster at this stage with Wheeling Hospital.”
State Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, the Senate majority whip, mentioned the issue has come from inaction from the PEIA finance board, which makes the choices as to how a lot funding the plan wants and sends that to the governor’s workplace so as to add to the state funds. The Legislature, he mentioned, has given the finance board every part it has requested for in recent times.
“My preliminary response to that is, sadly, I’m not stunned,” Weld mentioned, “as a result of for years nobody on the PEIA finance board or within the government department has wished to make any tough selections in anyway relating to PEIA. So it is a downside all of their very own creation.
“Folks have recognized about these points, these structural points to PEIA for fairly some time. But those that may make the choices selected to not make the choices.”
The state Senate truly unanimously handed a invoice final yr that might have addressed PEIA points, however that invoice later died within the Home of Delegates.
SB 574 – sponsored by Senate Well being Committee Chairman Mike Maroney, R-Marshall – would have cut up PEIA into two plans; the State Worker Insurance coverage Plan and the Nonstate Worker Insurance coverage Plan. The invoice required PEIA to determine and keep a reserve fund to complement any reimbursements made to hospitals and emergency medical service suppliers or companies.
In accordance with the invoice, PEIA would have reimbursed any hospital that gives inpatient care to a beneficiary coated by the plan at a charge of 110% of comparable providers provided by Medicare by July 1, 2023. Emergency medical service suppliers would have been included within the new reimbursement plan.
Maroney couldn’t instantly be reached for remark Thursday.
Weld believes this downside should be solved within the upcoming session, that tough selections have to be made and that an “overhaul” of how the state delivers insurance coverage to its staff could possibly be so as.
Wright is hopeful adjustments will be made earlier than the July 1 deadline, and that final yr’s Senate invoice could be an excellent blueprint. A part of what provides him hope, he mentioned, is that he doesn’t must persuade anybody in Charleston that there’s a downside with PEIA.
“I imagine they’re taking it severely,” Wright mentioned. “I imagine they’re going to work on it. I hope they have already got a glide path from what they created final yr they usually’ll choose that up and proper this, not only for Wheeling Hospital, however for all hospitals.”
If it isn’t mounted, Wright mentioned Wheeling Hospital won’t be the one hospital that takes this route. Others may comply with swimsuit.
“I do know for a truth they’re having related conversations,” he mentioned.