LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
May 18, 2009Medicaid – HB 1 and HB 2
The Senate Finance Committee will be crafting its version of the State’s biennial budget for SFY 2010 and 2011 this week. Over the next two weeks, the Senate will finalize its version of the budget concluding with the full Senate vote on June 3rd. For the remainder of June, House and Senate members on the Budget Committee of Conference will work out their differences with the final SFY 2010/2011 budget signed by the Governor no later than June 30th.
Keep up your grassroots advocacy over the next few days. With dwindling revenues, and rising Medicaid caseloads, the task before the Senators is even more challenging than the budget process in the House.
Hospitals are asking Senators to:
- restore outpatient hospital payment to 81% of allowable costs (PPS hospitals)
- restore inpatient hospital payments by adding back 10% to DRG payment rates
- retain the current hospital catastrophic payment fund
- restore direct graduate medical education payments
- restore the ability of hospitals to bill for provider-based services under Medicaid and
- dedicate new federal Medicaid ARRA (stimulus package) dollars solely for the Medicaid program.
Victory on Privacy - HB 580
This week the Senate killed HB 580, 24-0, the privacy bill that hospitals,
healthcare providers and businesses all opposed. Senators heard our concerns
that passage of the bill would have compromised treatment and impede the
development of EMRs. Furthermore, they were concerned that the bill would
conflict with new HIPAA regulations that will be adopted by the federal
government later in the year.
Victory on Medical Liability - HB 572
The Senate defeated the pretrial screening panel bill 18 to 6, despite the
Judiciary Committee’s recommendation for passage. Senators listened to our
concerns that changing the screening panel statute after only two years of panel
experience would interfere with two independent studies on the new process to be
completed in 2010.
Quality and Patient Safety - HB 592
Both the House and Senate have passed the adverse events reporting bill – HB 592
- requiring hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to report adverse events to
the Department of Health & Human Services beginning January 1, 2010. The bill
requires hospitals and ASCs to report on any of 28 adverse events listed in the
bill and include a root cause analysis and corrective action plan.
Uninsured Data Collection; Uncompensated Care Pool
SB 158, “establishing a commission to study the creation of an uncompensated
care fund” scheduled for a committee vote on May 26th. This bill will require a commission
to be convened to consider the design and operation of an uncompensated care
fund. NHHA will serve on this commission.
SB 147, “relative to the data collection practices of health care providers and
relative to the development of an uninsured healthcare database.” Committee work
on this bill will be completed over the next few weeks. Two years in the making,
this bill will require hospitals and community health centers to submit data to
the State on care provided to uninsured patients by hospitals, providers
employed or “legally controlled” by a hospital, hospital-owned physician
practices, and community health centers. The Departments of Health & Human
Services and Insurance will develop the uninsured healthcare database into which
the provider data will be inserted. The State will employ the Uniform Hospital
Discharge Data Set (UHDDS) for inpatient and outpatient hospital data, however,
hospitals will be required to report data on behalf of hospital-owned or
controlled providers, that are not captured by UHDDS. NHHA has been working with
legislators and stakeholders to help them understand the complexities associated
with the latter reporting requirements. If passed, reporting will not be
required until rules are promulgated.
Certificate of Need – HB 234
Both the House and Senate passed HB 234, “establishing a committee to study the
CON process.” The committee is charged with studying the entire certificate of
need statute (RSA 151-C), including the standards of need, procedures, board
membership, services regulated and financial thresholds. The committee’s report
will be due February 2010.
Upcoming:
SB 63, “relative to ensuring consumer access to care upon the termination of a
participating provider.” Full House vote is scheduled for May 20th on the Commerce Committee’s
recommendation to kill the bill. SB 63 was introduced to ensure that health
insurance subscribers have access to network adequacy reports in the event that
a provider contract is not renewed. With assurance by the Insurance Department
that these reports are considered public information and available upon request,
the Committee determined the legislation was not necessary.
SB 188, “relative to establishing a commission to study hospital billing
practices of health care providers.” This bill started out as a proposal to
mandate specifically how hospitals bill for outpatient services provided at
satellite locations. The full House will vote May 20th on the Senate’s version
of the bill creating a study commission to look into billing procedures used by
hospitals and hospital-owned facilities.
