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Weekly UpdatesFive Rivers Medical Center in Pocahontas is lobbying Congress to pass legislation that could lead to the hospital receiving "critical access" status.
With critical access hospital status, Five Rivers would receive a 101 percent reimbursement of its costs for treating Medicare and Medicaid patients, said Five Rivers Administrator John Tucker.
Beginning in 2006, however, states couldn't award the critical access designation unless a hospital was more than 35 miles away from another hospital. Five Rivers is less than 20 miles away from the nearest hospital. It and Pike County Memorial Hospital in Murfreesboro are the only two rural hospitals in the state that don't have the status.
On June 3, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., were co-sponsors of legislation that was introduced in Congress to restore a state's authority to waive the mileage requirement if all other requirements are met and the state designates the hospital a necessary provider, according to a news release from Pryor.
Tucker said Five Rivers could have received $700,000 more in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements if it had had the status in 2008. The 50-bed hospital lost $1.9 million in 2008 on revenue of $23 million.
"We're really not asking for any different reimbursement methodology than those other 29 critical access hospitals in the state," Tucker said. "We're just trying to get into that program, and we can't right now because of that distance requirement."
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