Huffman Co-Sponsors Bill to Let Rural Hospitals Hire Anesthesiologists With Medicare Funds
Press release from the Office of Congressman Jared Huffman:
Congressman Jared Huffman, center, listens during a May tour of SoHum Health’s construction and expansion projects in Garberville.
From left: John Driscoll, Congressman Jared Huffman and KMUD’s April Louis during a Sunday tour of SoHum Health’s hospital expansion projects in Garberville.This week, Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Congressman John Moolenaar (R-MI) introduced the Medicare Access to Rural Anesthesiology Act. The legislation would allow rural hospitals to use Medicare funding to hire physician anesthesiologists. Under current law, hospitals are only permitted to use Medicare funding to hire certified anesthesiologist assistants or nurse anesthetists.
“Rural hospitals and health centers, like the many throughout my district, serve communities that would otherwise have no access to essential health care. But their remote locations present many unique challenges – including building and sustaining a strong workforce,” said Rep. Huffman. “Our bill would remove barriers for anesthesiologists to participate in rural incentive programs that are a critical tool for rural medical facilities to attract and retain the staff they need to care for our communities.”
“Rural Michigan residents deserve to have access to the highest quality health care available. That is why we must modernize Medicare’s regulations and allow rural hospitals to recruit and pay physician anesthesiologists. Our commonsense, bipartisan legislation makes a small change to existing law to let these hospitals effectively use the funds already available to them and ensure Americans in rural communities can receive the anesthesia services they need, when they need them,” said Moolenaar.
The text of the Medicare Access to Rural Anesthesiology Act can be found here.
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That sure works for me. Anesthesiologists are in short supply in our area. He should have also added Primary Care physicians at the same time, as well as heart doctors that come here but don’t stay for some reason.
The shortage has been around for years. 1 cardiologist between coos Bay and the bay area is third world. Rent a doc is only short term. Huffman’s save the kelp campaign should be called save the constituents in his district campaign with just as much effort.
We had a relly good heart doctor a St. Joes. But the politics and management sent him away. WTF is wrong with these people?
This sounds nice but it reflects continuous fixing that the micromanaging of reimbursements by Medicare under the ACA created. Congress created Critical Care Hospitals long before ACA because they recognized that small hospitals far from more urban settings are necessary and that it was more expensive to run them because they need employees and facilities that are in use less often so cost more per patient to maintain. These are reimbursed at a slightly higher rate.
But then the government tries to micromanage paying this extra amount. They will cover this at the higher rate but not that. In this case Medicare would provide the higher rate of reimburse for lower paid employees that can provide the same service as a doctor because – ta da- Medicare reimbursement for them is cheaper. But then a physician anesthesiologist is still needed for something by regulation only now , because the lesser degreed person is preferred by Medicare for cost saving for some things, the hospital can’t afford a physician salary because the business done by a lower paid individual is not allowed them. It’s a Catch 22.
This proposed bill, and it is only proposed, offers another fix for this Medicare micromanaging but there are many others that still won’t let rural hospitals manage even sensibly much less meet the government requirements. The government doesn’t recognize the jack of all trades that a rural practitioner must be. Because it is not as “good” as a specialist. Which, while true, leads to hospitals not being able to recruit any doctor at all. We can’t afford specialists and yet the government won’t pay unless they are.
What rural places need is a physician certified in being a jack of many trades by necessity. Which of course runs counter to the bureaucratic “best practices” in vogue since ACA passed.