Lawmakers urged to spare hospitals in fixing SGR

Several hospital groups urged Congress to use savings from overseas operations as a way to solve Medicare's sustainable growth-rate formula for physicians—as long as those funds would provide for a full fix.

Organizations including the Federation of American Hospitals, the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association of the United States, and the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems sent a letter to members of Congress that again lobbied federal lawmakers to find a permanent solution to the way the Medicare program reimburses physicians that does not compromise funding to the nation's hospitals.

“H.R. 3630 as passed by the House in December jeopardizes access to care for all patients by cutting more than $20 billion in hospital payments,” the groups noted in their Feb. 1 letter (PDF). “Cuts of this magnitude will mean fewer nurses, longer waits for emergency care and decreased access to new treatments,” it continued. “America's hospitals encourage you to look elsewhere to pay for changes to the sustainable growth rate (SGR), including looking at the Overseas Contingency Operations funds, so long as those funds cover the entire cost of the SGR fix.”

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