U.S. Rep. Mel Watt is willing to take up Rowan Regional Medical Center’s fight against the county’s new “micropolitan” status, a status that might cost the hospital $2.9 million a year.
But he’s not ready to predict success.
“I think it’s too early to tell,” Watt said Monday.
Three boards —Rowan County Chamber of Commerce directors, Salisbury City Council and Rowan County Commissioners —have approved resolutions protesting the new designation.
For years, Rowan has been included in the Charlotte metropolitan statistical area along with several other counties. After the last census, however, the Office of Management and Budget decided to spin off some communities on their own as micropolitan areas.
The change would cause hospitals in micropolitan areas, such as Rowan Regional, to be reimbursed differently by Medicare. A consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, has estimated that the change could cost Rowan Regional $2.9 million a year.
Watt said a similar problem surfaced after the 1990 Census that affected Iredell County and all the hospitals there.
“We were able to form coalitions in Congress with people who had similar problems,” Watt told the Post on Monday. Those hospitals felt they were going to be shortchanged as a result of the changes, he said. “We got some language in appropriation bills to keep that from happening.”
Watt has met with representatives of Rowan Regional and requested additional information to document the argument that their hospital should be reimbursed at the same rate as Charlotte-region hospitals because the two markets are closely connected.
Meanwhile, Watt’s staff will try to identify other members of Congress whose districts include communities that “fall into the same trap,” as Watt put it.
“You’re a lot better off to fight this as part of a group than just Rowan County,”he said.
In North Carolina, Burke, Brunswick, Caldwell, Lincoln and Stanly counties also find themselves under the new micropolitan classification.
Local officials have speculated that the new micropolitan status might affect other federal funding, such as for housing and schools, but no one has verified that yet.
Watt said he was not aware of any programs being affected other than Medicare.
Watt said the federal government set different Medicare reimbursement rates because hospitals operate in different market environments. A remote, rural hospital might not face the same competitive pressures for workers, for example.
But Rowan and Iredell counties are very tied to the Charlotte metropolitan area, he said. A nurse or physician assistant who lives in Rowan can just as easily get a job in Charlotte, he said, so Rowan has to be prepared to pay a competitive wage. That affects the rate at which Medicare should reimburse the hospital, he said.
“This is not about attacking the assumption as a general principle,” Watt said. The government has to look at cost controls; it wouldn’t make sense to reimburse some hospitals at too high a rate and allow them to make more profit, he said.
But in Rowan’s particular case, the change might result in an unfair economic impact, Watt said.
“It’s too early to say, ‘Yes, we can solve this,’ ” Watt said. “But we will not leave any stone unturned to help Rowan Regional Medical Center.”
Contact Elizabeth G. Cook at 704-797-4244 or editor@salisburypost.com
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