Hospital Operations

Hospital operators are facing a tighter VBC margin environment as the Trump administration’s CMS advances a proposed 2.4% inpatient and long-term care hospital payment update while rural providers seek congressional extension of the Medicare Rural Community Hospital Demonstration—an AHA-supported move that would preserve cost-based-like protections for vulnerable facilities in markets central to ACO network adequacy and population health access (AHA rural hospital model bill). At the same time, hospitals are escalating contract