Summary

Changes in the delivery of health care, along with demographic and health workforce changes, have necessitated a reconfiguring of the state’s institutional health care infrastructure.  The state’s efforts to reconfigure the health care delivery system culminated in last year’s Berger Commission report, which called for the closure of numerous hospitals and nursing homes and the reconfiguration of scores more.  The costs of such actions, however, were only partially recognized, and institutions are left with having to finance their closure, consolidation, or reconfiguration, leading to continued upheaval in the health care delivery system.

Conference Position

The Conference supports the provision of financing adequate to handle the costs associated with reconfiguration, including mortgage and bond retirement, health workforce retraining and severance, and related expenses.

Rationale

A financially stable health care system requires a commitment on the part of all actors to secure adequate financing for institutions’ survival, transformation, or orderly shutdown.  Particularly with regard to non-profit health care institutions, the inadequacy of financing will deplete the institutions’ ability to preserve their assets for other health care service delivery uses.

It is incumbent upon the state to provide for an orderly, financially sound, and just transition of excess institutional capacity into other needed health care resources.