U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson dismissed a suit that alleged CMS cheated hospitals involved in mergers out of uncompensated care reimbursement under a now-revised 2014 disproportionate share hospital policy, according to Law360.
Tuscaloosa, Ala.-based DCH Health System filed the lawsuit in February 2016, accusing CMS of shortchanging hospitals that had merged of DSH payments. The health system claimed the 2014 policy caused them to lose out on uncompensated payments for seven months.
Ms. Brown suspended DCH Health System's suit in April 2016, awaiting a ruling on a 2015 suit brought by Tampa-based Florida Health Sciences Center against CMS for refusing to use the most recent data available for determining DSH payments in the 2014 policy.
In the Florida Health Sciences Center case, the court ruled in July 2016 that courts are barred from hearing challenges to the data used by CMS as part of the determination of the DSH payments since the 2014 reimbursement policy was changed.
Based on the court's ruling, Ms. Brown held that DCH's suit must be dismissed.
"This court discerns no meaningful difference between the so-called methodological challenge that DCH raises in this case ... and the data-based challenge that the D.C. Circuit considered," Ms. Jackson said in her ruling, according to Law 360.