Ohio approves nearly billion dollar payment after court ruled state shortchanged nursing homes

Ohio lawmakers approved an $875 cardinal outgo bundle Wednesday aft the Ohio Supreme Court recovered the authorities utilized the incorrect look to cipher definite Medicaid reimbursements for nursing homes, shortchanging providers by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The funding, included successful a fund correction measure that present heads to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine's desk, is intended to resoluteness a quality implicit payments to skilled nursing facilities that dates backmost to the 2024-25 fund cycle.

"This is the astir egregious happening we could person done to individuals that assistance our aged unrecorded a quality, comfy life," authorities Rep. Jean Schmidt said. "And contiguous we are correcting that wrong."

In a September 2025 ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court said authorities officials utilized the incorrect methodology erstwhile calculating definite Medicaid prime payments, resulting successful hundreds of millions of dollars successful underpayments to nursing homes. The tribunal ordered the authorities to recalculate what providers were owed.

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine poses for a radical photograph with the Ohio Congressional delegation aft the ceremonial swearing-in of Sen. Jon Husted successful the Old Senate Chamber astatine the Capitol connected Jan. 21, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Lawmakers' solution carries a larger terms tag than the magnitude identified successful the ruling. The bundle sets speech $875 million, including astir $310 cardinal from the authorities and $565 cardinal successful national funding, to settee the issue.

Ohio pays nursing homes a regular complaint for Medicaid residents and provides further payments to facilities that conscionable definite prime benchmarks. Nursing location operators argued the authorities failed to decently relationship for the aesculapian complexity of residents erstwhile calculating those payments, reducing reimbursement for facilities caring for immoderate of the sickest patients.

Lawmakers aboriginal revised the formula, but the authorities remained liable for payments tied to earlier fund cycles.

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The Ohio Statehouse successful Columbus. Ohio lawmakers approved an $875 cardinal outgo bundle for nursing homes aft the Ohio Supreme Court recovered the authorities underpaid providers done a Medicaid reimbursement formula. (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The fiscal stakes grew arsenic the lawsuit moved done the courts. In ineligible filings, Ohio Medicaid warned that recalculating the payments nether the court's mentation could outgo astir $285 cardinal much per twelvemonth than lawmakers primitively intended, perchance approaching $1 cardinal implicit 2 fund cycles.

The authorities requires providers that judge the wealth to waive aboriginal ineligible claims related to the disputed formula.

An aged nonmigratory sits with a walker astatine a nursing home. Ohio lawmakers moved to close hundreds of millions of dollars successful nursing location Medicaid underpayments aft a authorities Supreme Court ruling. (Getty Images)

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Scott D. Wiley, CEO of the Ohio Health Care Association, urged DeWine to motion the bill.

"These funds are critically important to Ohio’s providers and the families they serve, and we impulse Governor Mike DeWine to motion HB 479 into instrumentality without delay," Wiley said.