After Health Reform Passage – Implementation the New Watchword - March 31, 2010

After more than a year of grueling legislative process, Congress finally enacted health reform earlier this month. The massive health care system overhaul will take years to implement, but policy analysts and outside groups are well into the process of analyzing the new law and preparing for the flood of rules and regulations to be issued by the federal government. Just days after enactment, Donald Berwick, MD, was unofficially named the next administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a post that has been vacant since the inauguration of President Obama. Berwick, a pediatrician and health policy expert, currently heads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Massachusetts. During the long implementation process, NAPH will closely analyze and respond to rules to both educate member hospitals about the impact of upcoming rules and to advocate on behalf of our members.

While Congress’ attention is largely turned to non-health care issues, NAPH retains an aggressive advocacy agenda for the rest of the year. The agenda is focused on issues critical to safety net hospitals:

• Extension of enhanced Medicaid FMAP matching funds for states
• Extension of 340B drug discounts to the inpatient setting
• Appropriation of Community-Based Collaborative Care Networks program authorized by health reform legislation
• Changes to the DSH Auditing and Reporting rule to eliminate policy changes which would disallow certain DSH-eligible hospital costs.
• Extension of ARRA’s temporary Medicaid DSH Allotment Increase