Bill Directs $234 Million in Aid to Hospitals and Community Health Centers Around Massachusetts
BOSTON – Representative Richard M. Haggerty (D-Woburn), along with his colleagues in the House and Senate, enacted a supplemental budget bill that prioritizes care for the state’s most vulnerable populations by strategically targeting support to fiscally-strained hospitals and community health centers.
“This important relief package will help ensure that our financially strained hospitals and community health centers can keep providing high-quality care in every region of our Commonwealth,” said Representative Haggerty. “With all the uncertainty around health care funding or just general financing at the federal level, this targeted money will help our residents get the care they need and deserve while supporting the providers who serve them every day. I want to thank Speaker Mariano and my colleagues in the House and Senate for moving on this critical funding.”
The legislation, H.4530, addresses a widening funding gap in the Health Safety Net program, which pays acute care hospitals and community health centers for necessary medical care for low-income, uninsured, and underinsured Massachusetts residents. Reckless federal policies and funding shortfalls have exacerbated the fiscal strain on these vital institutions that serve people most in need.
This legislative response provides critical relief in the face of an unfriendly federal government and economic headwinds, distributing aid based on criteria that directs funding to vulnerable populations most in need of assistance.
Strengthening Massachusetts Hospital Systems
The funding agreement makes $199 million available for eligible high public payer acute care hospitals across the Commonwealth through an approach that maximizes federal financial reimbursements, stabilizes the Health Safety Net Trust Fund, and makes targeted payments to hospitals to maximize the impact of taxpayer dollars.
- Provides $122 million in targeted relief payments to certain acute care hospitals utilizing eligibility criteria designed to maximize the impact of taxpayers’ dollars for those hospitals and communities which need it most. The eligibility criteria include:
- Each hospital’s patient mix, prioritizing those which serve the greatest share of the state’s low-income population.
- Each hospital’s affordability, prioritizing those which provide services at the most affordable prices.
- Each hospital’s financial standing, prioritizing those which have the most severe fiscal strain.
- Transfers $77 million into the Health Safety Net Trust Fund to stabilize the program for hospitals providing services to the greatest share of the Commonwealth’s vulnerable populations.
Supporting Massachusetts Community Health Centers
- Community health centers continue to support the Commonwealth’s greatest share of vulnerable populations while facing federal funding delays, Medicaid cuts, and rising pharmaceutical and other medical costs.
- The agreement provides $35 million in financial relief to community health centers, including $2.5 million for the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers to facilitate regional savings initiatives, including shared service options.
With both chambers of the Legislature having voted to enact the supplemental budget, the legislation now goes to the Governor for her signature.
