Washington, DC (May 2, 2006) – This week, Congressman Rubén Hinojosa (TX-15) introduced legislation that will help rural America access quality and affordable health care – despite the often higher costs of health care delivery in rural areas and isolated communities. Congressman Hinojosa is a member of the Rural Health Care Coalition.
The Medicare Rural Health Provider Payment Extension Act, H.R. 5118, would extend Medicare reimbursement methods for services provided in isolated or underserved areas in America to help ensure that such reimbursements are equitable and fair for costs incurred by rural health providers.
“Providing quality and affordable health care services and treatment options to rural communities is often challenging and difficult,” said Hinojosa. “This legislation will help ensure that families living in rural communities aren’t shortchanged when it comes to health care and that they get the services they deserve. Rural health providers will now be in the same league with their urban counterparts and can receive reasonable reimbursement rates. We must continue to support rural America – this bill does just that.”
Provisions in the Medicare Rural Health Provider Payment Extension Act would:
• Extend the 5 percent payment adjustment for home health services provided in rural areas to help offset higher home health delivery costs, which can be as much as 12-15 percent higher than in urban areas;
• Extend the Medicare incentive payment program for physicians practicing in designated physician scarcity areas, communities and counties throughout the nation recognized as having low number of physicians serving populations in rural areas;
• Extend the 2 percent bonus payment for ambulance trips in rural areas to help offset the higher costs of ambulance services in rural areas, which contain farther distances between patients and care facilities;
• Extend the 1.0 floor on Medicare physician reimbursements to rural areas, who would be penalized for geographic location without extension of the MMA provision, to ensure fair and reasonable repayment to facilities and care providers in rural areas;
• Extend the hold harmless treatment for the nation's 535 sole community hospitals, which provide inpatient health services for residents in rural, isolated communities, to ensure equitable reimbursements for services provided; and,
• Extend reasonable cost reimbursement for clinical lab tests performed by rural hospitals as part of their outpatient services (i.e. for area patients receiving care at home or in nursing homes).
