The Wyoming Medical Center says it will appeal a ruling that would remove its Medicare “sole community provider” status. The decision would cost the hospital approximately 8-million dollars in yearly reimbursements from the federal government.
“Sole community provider” status aims to provide hospitals in rural areas money to offset expenses so they can provide full services to smaller populations.
Vicki Diamond is the President and CEO of the Wyoming Medical Center. She says the revocation of “sole community provider” status is being applied retroactively to January of 2010, and that the hospital will have to pay nearly 16 million dollars back to the feds.
She also says that the loss of "sole" status came because Mountain View Region Hospital had been handling over 8-percent of the area’s inpatients consistently since 2010.
“This was revoked because we have another hospital within 25 miles of our hospital who actually did 8% of our volume for total inpatient day,” says Diamond.
Diamond says Wyoming Medical has more than 4-million dollars set aside to pay back to the federal government, will not be laying off employees and will be finding ways to make up for the 8-million dollar loss of “sole” status, while looking for additional cost cutting measures in order to pay back Medicare.