“A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to reauthorize the Rural Flex program, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section revises the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program (i.e., grants to states under SSA §1820(g) to support critical access hospitals, rural health networks, and quality improvement) by (1) expanding state grant purposes to include support for critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, and rural emergency hospitals for quality improvement, performance benchmarking, population health, behavioral health and substance use disorder services responding to public health emergencies, critical access hospital conversions to rural emergency hospitals, and outreach on direct graduate medical education payments under SSA §1886(h) to specified rural hospitals, sole community hospitals, and related sites; (2) authorizing new grants or cooperative agreements for technical assistance, data analysis, and evaluation to support other grant recipients; (3) redirecting small rural hospital grants through State Offices of Rural Health on behalf of eligible small rural hospitals (i.e., rural non-federal acute care hospitals with fewer than 50 beds or rural emergency hospitals), with equal per-hospital national distribution for computer systems, staff training on billing and quality, and delivery reforms; and (4) updating cross-references. This section also makes funding under subsection (j) available in FY2011 and each subsequent fiscal year (from fiscal years 2011 through 2012 only) and strikes the requirement that such funds be drawn from the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund.