Last year Congress passed the Bipartisan Budget Act, which mandated site-neutral Medicare outpatient payments. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed a new regulation implementing this policy that NAUH believes will detract from the ability of private safety-net hospitals to bring much-needed outpatient care to their communities. NAUH submitted extensive comments to CMS about this proposed regulation; see them here.

NAUH LogoNAUH especially objects to:

  • limits on the ability of hospitals with existing hospital-based outpatient departments to rebuild or relocate those facilities without losing their hospital-based status;
  • limits on hospitals with existing hospital-based outpatient departments expanding those departments and offering additional services in them without losing their hospital-based status;
  • a prohibition against hospitals purchasing a hospital-based outpatient department from another hospital and retaining that hospital-based status for the acquired facility; and
  • an overly rigid definition of what constitutes an “on-campus” department.

Now, NAUH is asking members of Congress to sign onto a letter to CMS urging the agency to revise aspects of that regulation that pose potential barriers to ensuring access to these services in the low-income communities private safety-net hospitals serve. See NAUH’s message to Congress here.