Medi-Cal funds for hospital restored

<p>Petaluma Valley Hospital will be reimbursed for the 10 percent Medi-Cal reimbursement rate cut made last fiscal year, thanks to legislation introduced by Assemblymember Jared Huffman that was included in the recently passed state budget.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>The hospital faced the additional $2.5 million in cuts because Assembly Bill 1183 called for a 10 percent reduction, beginning Oct. 1, 2008, in areas that have three or more acute-care hospitals that operate on a fee-for-service basis rather than with a Medi-Cal contract. The cut applied to PVH because California Department of Health Services officials considered Sonoma Valley Hospital and Sonoma Development Center to be acute-care hospitals operating in Petaluma’s region.</p><p>PVH stood to lose some $3.1 million during the 2008-2009 fiscal year due to the bill.</p><p>When the bill was drafted, the intention was to exclude hospitals owned or operated by the state, but the language did not explicitly state that. So, PVH was unintentionally affected by the reductions due to the presence of a state-run developmental center in the area that was counted as a hospital.</p><p>The Sonoma Development Center does not provide general medical services to all residents in nearby communities. For instance, it is licensed for only 12 acute-care beds, offers no emergency services and is a residential facility specifically designed to meet the needs of people with developmental disabilities.</p><p>Huffman’s legislation, AB 75, revised the formula for determining reimbursement rates to hospitals to ensure that cuts were properly applied. During the recent budget negotiations, Huffman succeeded in inserting language from AB 75 into one of the trailer bills in the final budget package to immediately restore cuts so that hospitals would be retroactively reimbursed.</p><p>“Petaluma Valley Hospital greatly appreciates Assemblyman Jared Huffman’s efforts to reverse the Medi-Cal cuts implemented in 2008,” said Mitch Riccioni, chief financial officer for St. Joseph Health System-Sonoma County, which operates PVH. “The revised language will help Petaluma Valley during these challenging economic times.”</p><p>Sonoma Valley Hospital also will receive a reimbursement.</p><p>“We’re delighted to be able to get this money back for our hospitals,” Huffman said. “It was a simple error, but an error that would have cost the hospitals millions of dollars. These are small, district hospitals serving some of our most vulnerable populations.”</p><p>PVH serves a large population of seniors and a high percentage of local Medi-Cal patients, and is dependent on receiving reasonable reimbursement rates so that it can keep providing services and care without regard to patients’ ability to pay.</p>