HHS formula left them out of funding even though they sacrificed for pandemic
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
SOMERS POINT – Shore Medical Center and Cape Regional Medical Center were left out of federal funding even though each sacrificed millions of dollars in revenue to prepare and handle the COVID-19 crisis.
“This situation is untenable since many hospitals are left out of the distribution, including Cape Regional Medical Center and Shore Medical Center. We need to make sure that the funding recognizes the shared sacrifices that our health care heroes on the front line have made,” Joanne Carrocino, FACHE, president and CEO, Cape Regional Health System, said last week.
They have been mounting an effort, mobilizing citizens, local officials and business groups and calling the state’s federal delegation, led by U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, to rectify the decision by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
According to representatives from both hospitals, the HHS awarded $12 billion to 395 hospitals that cared for at least 100 COVID-19 patients through April 10. Of that, $2 billion is being distributed based on the hospitals’ Medicare and Medicaid disproportionate share and uncompensated care payments. There also is $10 billion going to rural hospitals that were operating on thin margins before the pandemic, when regulations stopped them from providing care and elective services to gear up for COVID-19 patients.
Officials from the hospitals said they support the HHS relief to hospitals, but need Shore Medical and Cape Regional to be included in the funding to remedy the sacrifices made by health care workers.
They laid out two specific points:
– “Shore and Cape Regional abided by all federal and state guidelines to protect their staff and care for COVID-19 patients by shutting down services. As a result, they have lost millions of dollars.
– “Shore and Cape Regional have treated symptomatic COVID-19 patients as far back as January, and these patients are not included in the HHS’s minimum threshold of 100 patients admitted prior to April 10, 2020. If these patients were included, Shore and Cape Regional would receive the funding that they deserve. Instead, they, their patients, and their staff have been forgotten.”
Cape May County and Atlantic County have fared far better in the COVID-19 pandemic than most of the other counties across New Jersey and in south Jersey. By the end of last week, there were about 450 cases of COVID-19 in Cape May County, and 32 deaths, and almost 1,500 cases in Atlantic County and 72 deaths.
However, hospital representatives say the sacrifices they made by shutting non-essential care and surgeries, made them suffer financially along with every other hospital, whether they served one coronavirus patient or 100. They had to shut down elective services and non-emergent services beginning in mid-March to ensure there was enough capacity to care for patients infected with COVID-19 and to protect their own workers.
“Every patient’s life and every clinician who cared for them should be counted and valued the same as those in other hospitals in the state and across the country,” the representatives said.
They called on everyone possible to call Booker at (973) 639-8700 and Menendez at (973) 645-3030 who represent New Jersey to ask them to intervene and get the HHS funding.
