The HSCRC, which is approved by a federal government waiver, also agreed to increase outpatient rates 2.59 percent, but after three straight years of rate increases falling shy of inflation, Maryland hospitals are beginning to worry more.
“We find ourselves falling below the state rate-setting commission’s own benchmark — an efficiently operating hospital ought to have an operating margin of 2.75 percent, and we’re below that already, so we’re very, very concerned,” said Carmela Coyle, president of the Maryland Hospital Association, in a Washington Business Journal report.
Maryland is the only state that has this type of healthcare commission, which regulates the rates for all hospital services and requires all payors — commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, self-pay — to pay hospitals the same fixed rate. While it limits hospital profitability, it also eliminates cost-shifting and varying hospital rates among payors, according to the report.
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