Hospital Under-Reimbursement Trends (HURT)
Beginning with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 through to the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 and beyond, there have been numerous changes in Medicare policy affecting hospital reimbursement. The 1997-2008 Medicare Hospital Under-Reimbursement Trends (HURT) analysis examines the impact of both the legislative policy and the associated regulatory changes on hospitals' Medicare reimbursement rates.
The HURT analysis contains a number of charts and tables, each of which shows the changes in hospital reimbursement over an eleven-year period compared to inflationary cost increases using Medicare's hospital marketbasket index (actual and forecasted) over the same time period. The information is presented in both Statewide and Congressional district formats.
For each Congressional district, as well as the State, there are two reports. The first report shows the average per case rate by year and percentage changes over time. The second report shows the accumulated shortfall due to the difference between the compounded annual increases in real costs and the compounded changes in actual Medicare payment rates.
Included are two additional tables - one that geographically shows the cumulative impact of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) consistent problems in projecting the Medicare hospital marketbasket, and the other that describes the major legislative and regulatory changes affecting Medicare inpatient hospital payments from 1998 to the present.
Medicare Hospital Payments Fail to Keep Up with the Cost of Care
The analysis of New Mexico Hospitals' hospital rate increases over the time period 1997 through 2008, as compared to inflationary costs increases, reveals that each year Medicare hospital payments fell behind inflation by an average of 2.4 percent, resulting in a cumulative shortfall of $353,657,000 over the eleven-year period. New Mexico hospitals received cumulative payment increases of 29.7 percent while costs, as measured by CMS' hospital marketbasket index, increased by 48.5 percent, or 3.7 percent per year. Data for each Congressional District over the 11 years shows how material this under-funding is.
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