American Hospital Association CEO Rich Umbdenstock sent letters to members of Congress on March 24 saying the organization agreed with bipartisan legislation to repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula.
“The package strikes a careful balance in the way it funds the SGR repeal and embraces a number of structural reforms to the Medicare program,” Umbdenstock wrote.
The SGR is used to determine physician payments for treating Medicare patients. If Congress does not pass legislation, payments may be decreased by 21 percent on April 1.
Umbdenstock said the legislation would repeal current policies such as reductions to outpatient hospital services, Medicare bad debt payments, graduate medical education, critical access hospitals and services in rehabilitative hospitals. It would also reject another ICD-10 delay.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.