Uncompensated-care audits coming in fall

Modern Healthcare: Now that hospitals' uncompensated-care claims affect how much the federal government pays them, the industry is bracing for heightened scrutiny of its reporting.

This is the first fiscal year of a three-year phase-in during which the CMS will use hospitals' charity care and bad debt, together known as uncompensated care, to calculate their disproportionate-share hospital payments. Those payments used to be based mostly on how many Medicaid, dual-eligible and disabled patients hospitals served, but the Affordable Care Act included the switch under the assumption that more people would gain coverage under Medicaid and subsidized plans.

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