Hospital groups urge Supreme Court to affirm Medicare DSH ruling

The AHA, Federation of American Hospitals, and Association of American Medical Colleges today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a D.C. Circuit Court decision that the Department of Health and Human Services violated the Medicare Act when it changed Medicare’s reimbursement adjustment formula for disproportionate share hospitals without providing notice and opportunity to comment. “The question presented here is of tremendous importance to amici’s members,” the amicus brief states. “The federal Medicare program enables amici’s members to provide the wide range of critical health care services on which their patients and communities rely. And the patients and communities for whom this issue of Medicare administration matters most are among the country’s most vulnerable.” By evading the notice-and-comment process, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services “were allowed to impose their own substantive policy views without understanding their direct impact on health care providers and those they serve,” the associations said. “That procedural shortcut leads to policies that harm those affected by them, as well as inconsistency and uncertainty in how providers’ Medicare reimbursements may be determined from year to year.”