Midstate hospitals get nearly $10.5 million in settlement over unpaid bills

(Harrisburg) — Fourteen midstate hospitals settled a dispute with the government over health care bills last year, and the Obama administration is now naming the hospitals.

Lancaster General Hospital received the most money of any midstate facility – more than $2.6 million.

PinnacleHealth got about $2 million and Holy Spirit Hospital in Cumberland County came in slightly lower, followed by a long list of other hospitals.

All the money comes from the settlement of a long-running dispute over whether hospitals followed rules when admitting Medicare patients.

Paula Bussard with the industry trade group The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania says when regulators make tweaks, it can have a big impact.

“Then when policies change, it’s not clear, and then that is when you get into this kind of dispute process while the regulatory side and the appeals side work through it,” says Bussard.

Bussard says she hopes the auditing and appeals process for Medicare claims is streamlined, so hospitals can devote more money to patient care, instead of administrative costs.

“It’s basically dollars on the administrative side of health care, and not dollars spent on patient care, and that’s constantly that trade-off,” she adds.

Despite the nationwide settlement, hospitals are only getting about 2/3rds of what they asked for.

More than a third of U.S. hospitals participated in the settlement, but there was one notable exception in the midstate – Penn State Health’s Hershey Medical Center.