NY's HHC faces $430M budget gap in 2015; Proposed bill would protect rural hospitals;

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> New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation faces a $430 million budget gap for fiscal year 2015 and the figure will likely triple to nearly $1.4 billion by 2018, according to Alan Aviles, president and CEO of the health system, Capital New York reported. Article

> A bipartisan U.S. senator group introduced legislation that would protect rural critical access hospitals and patients by eliminating the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' condition of payment rules, which require doctors to predict and limit patient stays to within 96 hours, according to Hays Post. Article

> Minnesota hospitals provided $521 million in uncompensated care in 2012, a 9.5 percent increase since 2008, according to the Minnesota Hospital Association's Community Benefit Report. Report (.pdf)

Health Finance News

> Patients, fed up with the facility fees that many hospitals and healthcare systems impose on them, may soon refuse to pay the charges, the Miami Herald reported. Article

> The continuing trend of shifting healthcare costs to patients exposes more price variations among hospitals for identical procedures, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. Article

And Finally... It's a jungle out there. Article