April
13, 2016--The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent
congressional agency that advises Congress on issues affecting the Medicare
program, has begun to discuss an issue important to Sen. Chuck Grassley: new methods of
“improving efficiency and preserving access to emergency care in rural areas.” 
The
commissioners discussed a possible new payment option for critical access hospitals
in which the hospitals would shift to outpatient services only with emergency
room services.
Grassley
is the sponsor of the Rural
Emergency Acute Care Hospital (REACH) Act that would allow such
hospitals to shift from offering inpatient care to outpatient care with
emergency room services.
Grassley’s
bill is meant to recognize that inpatient beds are hard to fill in many small
communities but emergency room care is critical. Grassley made the
following comment on MedPAC’s discussion.
“It’s good news to hear a discussion about hospital needs in rural communities. MedPAC notes that rural hospitals have closed, and more are in danger of closing, so a discussion of whether to shift away from inpatient beds to outpatient care and emergency services is timely and necessary.
"I look
forward to more discussions among policy experts and the enactment of policies
that keep rural hospitals open and serving their communities in a flexible,
updated way.”
