HHS asks Supreme Court for more time in filing response to site neutral payment review

The Office of Well being and Human Services has asked the Supreme Court docket for an extension to file a reaction to the American Hospital Association’s request for a judicial assessment concerning site neutral payments.

The government reaction was thanks by March fifteen, but on March 3 Norris Cochran, performing Secretary of Well being and Human Company, asked for an extension until finally April 14, according to courtroom files.

In February, the Supreme Court docket acknowledged the AHA’s request for judicial assessment of an appeals courtroom choice siding with HHS’s choice to minimize payments to off-campus facilities. 

WHY THIS Matters

At stake for hospitals was the decline of an believed $800 million in income in 2020, at a time when health and fitness units have been and continue to experience economical difficulties thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

THE Much larger Pattern

The Bipartisan Funds Act in 2015 licensed CMS to impose site-neutral payments but grandfathered present clinic outpatient facilities. 

In November 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the decision to move forward with a two-year section-in of site-neutral payments in spite of a choice in the district courtroom previously in the year siding with hospitals in their battle to hold the higher outpatient payments for off-campus facilities.

HHS appealed the choice, but in December 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services claimed it would repay hospitals for cuts produced in site-neutral payments by immediately reprocessing calendar year 2019 claims for clinic outpatient products and services delivered in off-campus provider-dependent departments that had been grandfathered below the Bipartisan Funds Act of 2015. The total was believed at $380 million for 2019.

In July 2020, the U.S. Court docket of Appeals in the District of Columbia claimed HHS had the authority to minimize the payments. The courtroom choice intended CMS would now be shelling out previously grandfathered off-campus outpatient departments run by hospitals at the same lower fee as physician clinics.

Hospitals asked the Supreme Court docket for a judicial assessment, trying to get to have the ruling overturned.

The sizeable variation involving Medicare payments to clinic outpatient facilities and impartial workplaces has inspired hospitals and health and fitness units to acquire physician practices, but a study has pointed out that good research about this has been lacking up to now.

Twitter: @SusanJMorse
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