Six national hospital groups, including the American Hospital Association, are urging the Supreme Court to review a case that challenges how HHS applies Congress' formula for calculating Disproportionate Share Hospital payment.
The groups allege in a friend-of-the-court brief that HHS "has adopted the view that a patient is entitled to Supplemental Security Income benefits only if the patient actually received cash SSI payments during a hospital stay, an interpretation that is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's reasoning in Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation," according to a Feb. 2 AHA news release.
"Although HHS has refused to share the data that would allow hospitals to accurately count the SSI-eligible patients whom the agency's approach excludes, the available estimates suggest that hospitals will lose more than a billion dollars each year in DSH funds," the groups argue in the brief. "What's more, a hospital's eligibility for DSH payments affects its entitlement to other federal benefits designed to help hospitals 'stretch scarce federal resources,' including the 340B Drug Discount Program."
The Association of American Medical Colleges, America's Essential Hospitals, the Catholic Health Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and the National Rural Health Association are the other groups that signed the brief.
Read the full brief here.