WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley is welcoming news from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that it has fixed an extension of a Medicare payment designation program that is critical to small, often rural hospitals. The “tweener” program is critical to hospitals in Grinnell, Carroll, Newton and Spirit Lake and the patients they serve. The agency was imposing delays on the payment extension that Congress didn’t intend, and Grassley led an effort to get the delays corrected.
“The fix is in keeping with congressional intent,” Grassley said. “It’s great news for the hospitals that depend on this critical program to keep their doors open for their patients.”
Grassley led a bipartisan letter urging a fix of the implementation delay and received a commitment to work on the issue from the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The tweener hospitals in Iowa are St. Anthony Regional Hospital in Carroll, Grinnell Regional Medical Center in Grinnell, Skiff Medical Center in Newton and Lakes Regional Healthcare in Spirit Lake.
The bipartisan letter to CMS in May that Grassley led is available here.
Video of his exchange with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in June is available here.
CMS’ fact sheet announcing the final rule with the payment implementation fix is available here.
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