As CEO of MLK Community Healthcare — a safety-net health system based in South Los Angeles — Elaine Batchlor, MD, has a lot on her plate. But in recent weeks, her strategy has been dominated by proposed cuts to Medicaid funding — and what they could mean for the community and for the survival of the system’s 131-bed Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital.
Dr. Batchlor, who is also a University of California regent, expressed her concerns about the proposed $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years in a March 16 op-ed for The Hill. She also spoke with Becker’s on March 26 about the proposed cuts and how she is preparing her leadership team and board for the possibility of reductions.
She noted Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital’s payer mix. More than 75% of the hospital’s patients are on Medicaid, and the commercially insured population makes up only about 3% to 4% of the payer mix. The rest are on Medicare or are uninsured.
“When you have such a large proportion of your patients and your payments that are tied to Medicaid and Medicare, any type of cuts to those programs are potentially devastating to our continued ability to provide access and services for our community,” Dr. Batchlor said.
Given that the proposed cuts are not finalized, she said it is “a little early” to have worked out a detailed contingency plan. However, the hospital is preparing in other ways.
“We are definitely having conversations about the potential threats to our funding and what that would mean to our services,” Dr. Batchlor said. “We’ve talked about which services we might have to stop providing to our community. Unfortunately, labor and delivery is always vulnerable when finances are stressed, because most hospitals lose money on labor and delivery services.
“We’ve been through financial distress over the past couple of years, and one of our goals was to keep our labor and delivery unit open — especially in light of the fact that neighboring hospitals have closed their labor and delivery units. We’ve been successful at raising some philanthropic funds to support it. But when we’re thinking about how to respond to potentially significant cuts in funding, the conversation definitely includes looking at services that we might have to stop providing.”
She said that moving forward, she hopes healthcare providers continue to prioritize providing the services patients need most urgently.
“I know that sometimes hospital executives think more about service lines that are profitable. And obviously, if we’re all financially stressed, there is going to be that reaction,” Dr. Batchlor said. “But I hope that people will also keep front of mind the types of services that are most needed by patients in our communities and work as hard as they can to maintain those services.”
