About 40 hospitals across five states have filed a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, alleging that yearslong delays in correcting Medicare disproportionate share hospital payments have cost them “tens of millions” of dollars.
The safety-net hospitals in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Minnesota filed the lawsuit March 14 in a Washington, D.C., district court, Becker’s reports.
DSH payments are meant to support hospitals that have a high mix of low-income patients. In 2008, a federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled against how HHS calculates the payments and ordered the government to send payments to its contractors to determine how much was still owed to the hospitals. Read more.
