The Indiana Regional Medical Center is one of eighteen hospitals in the state that participate in the Pennsylvania Rural Health Care Model, a federal program of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that pays participating hospitals in less populous regions a fixed amount of reimbursements rather than a per patient amount, in some cases enabling those hospitals to remain open. At a House Appropriations Committee budget hearing last week, State Human Services Secretary Valerie Arkoosh told Representative Jim Struzzi that the program will end this year, and since it’s a federal program, Pennsylvania has no ability to keep it alive.
Arkoosh said hospitals are being given the option of stepping out of the model at the end of the year or entering a “two-year off-ramp” to ease out of the program. She said “all models are on the table” and it’s a priority of the Shapiro administration to keep hospitals open, but had no proposal for replacing the federal funds that will be lost.
Struzzi says the Rural Health Care Model is a great program for IRMC. Other area hospitals enrolled in the model are Punxsutawney, Armstrong, Clarion, and Windber.
