Team Braun Briefing Prepared for: John RE: SITE Act // priority message below
Senator Mike Braun recently introduced his bipartisan bill to fix part of the Medicare billing structure that allows hospital systems to charge high rates for care received at off-campus outpatient facilities. He was joined by Senator Maggie Hassan and Senator John Kennedy.
Due to Medicare’s billing structure, even if care is received at an off-campus outpatient facility, it can be billed as though the care was provided at the main hospital campus. This means the higher hospital rate is charged. |
“Hoosiers know our health care system is broken, and one problem we can fix right now is services at off-campus outpatient facilities being billed to Medicare at higher hospital rates.” // Sen. Mike Braun |
This issue has become more prevalent as more and more small physician-owned practices and off-campus facilities are acquired by larger hospital systems. |
“Fixing this problem will save taxpayers 40 billion over the next decade, and this bill will apply some of those savings to fixing our nursing shortage by creating a new program to pay for training.” // Sen. Mike Braun |
The Site-based Invoicing and Transparency Enhancement (SITE) Act will: – End the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act site neutral exceptions.
– Prevent off-campus emergency departments from charging higher rates than on-campus emergency departments when standalone emergency facilities are located in close proximity to a hospital campus. – Require that health systems establish and bill using a unique National Provider Identifier number for each and every off-campus outpatient department. – Direct HHS to treat outpatient departments as subparts of the parent organization and to issue these subparts unique provider identifiers. – Remove liability for services rendered for payers that are not billed in accordance with this section’s requirements.
The bill will use the savings from these outlined steps to help fill the nursing shortage by creating a graduate nursing education program that would provide payments for training costs. ### |
