Hospital and health system executives and practitioners were largely supportive of the CMS’ proposed changes to the wage index that they say has disproportionately impacted rural providers.
Hospital presidents and concerned employees, predominantly from rural areas, claim in some of more than 2,000 public comments that the “fundamentally flawed” system the CMS uses to set hospital payments has led to hospital closures. They hope that the agency’s plan in October to raise the index for low-wage hospitals at the expense of decreasing it for high-wage hospitals will close a wide payment disparity. Click here to access the July 3, 2019 article from Modern Healthcare.