Rural hospitals don't like new payment program Congress passed because they would have to give up inpatient care

Many rural hospitals aren't interested in a new payment model Congress passed to help them, reports Daniel Payne of Politico.

"The Rural Emergency Hospital designation would offer a new way for rural hospitals to be paid, but many rural hospitals and communities are put off by the requirements, including ceasing inpatient services," Payne reports. They had hoped the program would head off another wave of closures that preceded the pandemic, but "The rules proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services surprised many hospital administrators, who said the program wouldn’t work for their facilities."

Giving up inpatient services would take from many hospitals their community's working definition of the word "hospital." Congressional authors of the plan told Payne that it "will work as intended by creating a new option for hospitals on the brink of closure," he writes. "It will effectively allow an emergency room to exist where any hospital wouldn’t have previously been able to survive. That still leaves most rural hospitals, an increasingly endangered group, without a bigger fix."