The spending deal that congressional negotiators announced on Tuesday … addresses concerns about critical-access hospitals. In recent years, the Obama administration has proposed eliminating critical-access designation for facilities that are within 10 miles of each other. That would result in lower Medicare and Medicaid payments for those hospitals … Congress wants the CMS to produce a report within 90 days of enactment of the budget deal looking at how the 10-mile rule would affect access to healthcare providers in rural communities. “There’s been a lot of concern about the president’s proposal, particularly from rural hospital advocates,” said Eric Zimmerman, principal at McDermottPlus Consulting. “Ten miles is sort of an arbitrary number.”
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