How We Think

In 2016 as the state of New Mexico faced both new and continued financial challenges, state agencies were asked to implement dramatic and wide-ranging budget reductions. For hospitals, physicians and dentists, reductions in Medicaid payment rates were expected to reach $78 million. The cuts were expected to have a disproportionate impact on safety net hospitals, which would experience a 5% cut to inpatient payments, a 3% cut in outpatient payments and a 20% cut in the enhanced supplemental payments intended to offset uncompensated care.

In 2016 as the state of New Mexico faced both new and continued financial challenges, state agencies were asked to implement dramatic and wide-ranging budget reductions. For hospitals, physicians and dentists, reductions in Medicaid payment rates were expected to reach $78 million. The cuts were expected to have a disproportionate impact on safety net hospitals, which would experience a 5% cut to inpatient payments, a 3% cut in outpatient payments and a 20% cut in the enhanced supplemental payments intended to offset uncompensated care.

As documented in a New York Times article, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book and now a Netflix docuseries, the days inside Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans following landfall of Hurricane Katrina were truly horrific. Within a week of the evacuation of the hospital, our firm was engaged by LifeCare Hospitals – the owner of the long-term acute care unit that leased space within MMC – to help them prepare for regulatory scrutiny, civil and criminal lawsuits, and an avalanche of international media interest.