During a recent House Ways and Means Committee meeting, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that proposed Medicare and Medicaid rate cuts will harm rural hospitals.
Reed, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said officials from hospitals in his district have voiced concern about reimbursement rate cuts that result from the Affordable Care Act being included in President Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal.
“The Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rate cuts that the administration is imposing are hurting our frontline rural hospitals and preventing access to care,” Reed said. “It’s important the secretary hears our rural hospital concerns and knows the policies the Administration supports is putting rural hospitals at risk.”
Reed cited St. James Mercy Hospital in Steuben County, New York, and Lake Shore Hospital in Chautauqua County, New York, as examples of how local hospitals are struggling.
“So many of our local hospitals are doing great work to innovate and turn around their models for care delivery, like St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell, and yet the administration is making that task much more complicated with its reimbursement rate cuts,” Reed said. “Instead of caring for rural hospitals and helping them make a comeback, the administration is putting up roadblocks, increasing costs and jeopardizing critical access to care.”
St. James Mercy Hospital interim President and CEO Jennifer Sullivan said the hospital faces $15 million in cuts over the next 10 years.