The industry-wide settlement with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave Community Health Systems (CHS) $102 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2012, the Brentwood, Tenn.-based hospital operator announced yesterday.
CHS was one of 2,200 hospitals to settle underpayments that stretch back to 1999 regarding the rural floor budget neutrality adjustments established as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Under the settlement, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services agreed to pay as much as $3 billion to the hospitals, FierceHealthFinance previously reported.
For the first quarter of this year CHS saw $535.5 million in adjusted earnings, compared to $457.1 million in the first quarter of 2011, the organization said. Revenues totaled $3.3 billion, up 11.6 percent from $3 billion in last year's first quarter.
Other major hospitals also have reported hefty underpayments from the CMS settlement. For example, HCA Holdings got an additional $271 million in Medicare payments from the agreement, while Tenet Healthcare Corp. received $84 million for its hospitals. Both organizations expect to realize proceeds from the settlement by June 30.
In other news, a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas last month threw out a lawsuit against CHS, in which Tenet accused the hospital operator of admitting too many patients to inflate profits and overbill Medicare.
For more information:
- read the CHS statement