Pending legal challenges in three federal lawsuits, healthcare as we know it will be changed abruptly in 2014. What isn’t well-known, though, is how this new law will transform assisted living facilities across the nation.

Pending legal challenges in three federal lawsuits, healthcare as we know it will be changed abruptly in 2014. What isn’t well-known, though, is how this new law will transform assisted living facilities across the nation.

The biggest change is already upon us. State governments, like ours in Michigan, are paying providers to transfer nursing home patients into assisted living facilities. The reasoning behind this trend has everything to do with the precarious financial condition of many States, who find themselves with deficits in the billions of dollars. One source of possible cost savings for these States is in their Medicaid expenditures. By reducing the population of Medicaid nursing patients, states like Michigan can eliminate the expense of paying $200 per day for each resident, or $72,000 per patient per year.

Of course it isn’t a total savings, since these patients must be housed elsewhere. This is where certain assisted living facilities appear in the picture. These facilities will contract with state agencies to house some of the patients at a reduced rate in assisted living environments. The result is still a savings of $80-$100 per day to Medicaid for each of these residents.

Although Town Commons is not participating in this nursing home transition program, many assisted living facilities are now doing so—thereby changing the face of assisted living throughout the state. Expect to see a more “medical environment” in those facilities involved in this program, as certain assisted living facilities will begin to resemble nursing homes to a degree few could have predicted ten years ago.