The Supreme Court has accepted a petition to review a decision on a case that decreased the extra Medicare payments received by hospitals that serve larger populations of low-income patients, Bloomberg Law reported June 10.
The contested case was previously reassessed in June 2022, when the Supreme Court upheld the original decision to decrease payments made in 2005 defining what the phrase "entitled to benefits" means, according to Bloomberg Law. The court backed HHS' statement that "individuals 'entitled to [Medicare Part A] benefits' are all those qualifying for the program, regardless of whether they are receiving Medicare payments for part or all of a hospital stay."
In July 2017, Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., and more than 200 hospitals had sued the HHS over the department's method of determining their received payments, also known as disproportionate share hospital payment adjustments, Bloomberg Law reported. The hospitals said the payment calculation did not fully account for all care provided to patients eligible for Supplemental Security Income patients. These arguments, as well as the hospitals' request for recalculation of payments for the years of 2006-2009, were rejected by the District Court for the District of Columbia.
In December 2023, attorneys for the hospitals that sued HHS in 2017 petitioned the Supreme Court to revisit its June 2022 decision, claiming it does not answer whether the term "entitled to [SSI] benefits" includes all those who quality for SSI or only those who actually receive those benefits, according to the publication.
"The Court should seize this opportunity to review this question of pressing importance, which affects the survival of safety net hospitals across the country and the health of the Nation’s most vulnerable communities," the petition said.