U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Friday the recently announced Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed rules change could result in nearly $1 billion in increased payments to Upstate New York hospitals.
“For far too long, Upstate New York hospitals have faced unfairly low Medicare payments that fell terribly short of wage demands leaving hospitals struggling to compete to bring the best doctors and nurses to Upstate New York,” Schumer said in a media release. “After years of fighting though, the feds have finally shifted course, and proposed a new rule that can help finally rectify the unfair payment system, and give Upstate NY the shot in the arm it has long needed to the tune of nearly a billion dollars every single year.”
Schumer said that CMS’s Hospital Inpatient PPS Proposed Rule would amend the Medicare formula to include $967+ million in increased federal funding for hospital systems across Upstate New York, which for years have received less than the national average for the services they provide.
Locally, A.O. Fox Hospital in Oneonta would receive an additional $4,025,612, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown would get $20,398,297 and UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital in Norwich would get $3,886,964.
Schumer said the Medicare Wage Index rate is used to determine how much money the U.S. government pays hospitals for labor costs when they treat Medicare patients. Each metro area is assigned a rate that dictates whether they receive more or less than the national average for health care labor costs.
For example, since the 1980s, hospitals in the Albany area have received only 86% of what the average hospital receives to account for wages, which is not reflective of the true wages and labor market in Albany, the release said. The Fiscal Year 2024 Inpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule would increase the Capital Region’s adjustment to 122% of what the average hospital receives in wage adjustments, “finally acknowledging that the region needs much higher than averages wages to compete and bring in the best providers, thereby bringing hundreds of millions in federal funding to Capital Region hospitals each year,” the release said.