The Knox County Nursing Home is being audited while owing $78,000 to the state from resident liability changes. How much the state will collect though is unknown.
The audits involve finding discrepancies between what they’ve paid the nursing home and the services that were actually rendered.
Nursing Home Administrator Rachel Secrist says those discrepancies usually involve changes in residents’ liabilities that haven’t been processed by the state yet.
Liability change examples include social security amounts or health insurance premiums changing for a resident.
The audit that they are currently going through is for the period of July 2013 to December 2014 but Secrist tells WGIL that auditors also look at previous audits to check on outstanding balances from previous periods.
“So if they have done five Medicaid audits before that, all of those are still fair game if they haven’t collected their money,” Secrist says.
Secrist is comfortable that the nursing home owes about $78,000 but how much of that the state will actually collect is a mystery.
And for a cash strapped county the thought of losing that much is worrisome.
Committee member Bob Bondi suggested setting up a reserve account to prepare for these types of situations.
Secrist says the audits are at the state’s discretion.
“Usually they say that they come in every two to three years, but our last one was in 2011,”Secrist adds. “Before that, it was 2009.”
In other business at last night’s meeting, the nursing home committee approved bidding out a contract for the nursing home’s therapy provider.
