Two safety-net hospitals hit hard by budget cuts
State budget cuts will hit two of the state's safety-net hospitals particularly hard. Boston Medical Center has been notified it will not be reimbursed $64 million for care delivered to low-income Medicaid patients last fiscal year, and Cambridge Health Alliance will lose out on $40 million it had been expecting, state and hospital officials said yesterday.
An executive at Boston Medical, where 150,000 Medicaid patients receive care each year, said the hospital will be forced to cut services. Tom Traylor, vice president of federal and state programs, said the hospital is mulling which programs for low-income patients would be cut; options include interpreter services, transportation to the hospital, and asthma, diabetes or primary care.
Traylor said the cut is in addition to $12 million the hospital will lose this year as part of the sweeping reductions announced Wednesday by Governor Deval Patrick to close a $1.1 billion budget gap.
The medical center is a priority of Mayor Thomas M. Menino's administration, and the mayor said he is concerned about the potential effect of the cuts on residents.
"Regardless of changes in health insurance, there will always be many, many people who are not covered at all or not adequately and BMC continues to be the safety net for all those people," he said. "We would like to see the state work closely with the medical center to ensure their mission is protected."
Officials at Cambridge Health Alliance, which treated more than 50,000 Medicaid patients in the last fiscal year, said yesterday they had not yet been notified of the cuts. Earlier this year, the Globe reported that the hospital was on track to lose $26 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30.
Juan Martinez, a spokesman for the Patrick administration, said the cuts are part of more than $200 million slashed from Medicaid payments to providers "that allowed us to preserve all currently funded MassHealth populations and services. We understand the important role these hospitals play and remain committed to supporting them as best we can through this difficult economic time for everyone."
Lawmakers earmarked the Medicaid money for the hospitals as part of Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law because they treat a disproportionately large number of low-income patients, but other hospitals have complained about being left out.
The payments are slated to end next year. Any cuts to the payments before that time must be approved by state lawmakers, and Traylor said BMC is considering asking legislators to rescind the cuts.
The governor's decision to cut Medicaid spending means Massachusetts will lose matching federal money.
In other healthcare cuts, the Department of Public Health is trimming nearly $6 million from its immunization program. Massachusetts has long been a national leader in buying vaccines for children and then distributing them to doctors, a policy that yielded the highest vaccination rates in the United States.
In an interview, John Auerbach, the state's public health commissioner, said his agency has not decided how much of the spending reduction will be carved from childhood immunizations and how much from adult programs, although he said all could come out of the adult program. The state had committed about $51.5 million for immunizations this budget year, with the federal government kicking in a comparable amount.
Donovan Slack of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com and Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com. 