Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Report to Congress. In October, the CMS Innovation Center published the Report to Congress on the progress of the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration, which began in 2005 per the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and has been re-authorized twice since. The demonstration examines the effect of an alternative payment methodology for inpatient hospital services in small rural community hospitals with fewer than 51 beds that are not eligible to be Critical Access Hospitals. Over a 12-year period, 33 hospitals participated at some point, and the demonstration increased payments on a per hospital, per year basis by 41 percent during fiscal year (FY) 2005-2009 and 42 percent during FY 2011-2013.
