Hospital leaders make use of recess, ask lawmakers to stop Medicare cuts

American Hospital Association News
The hospital’s Medicare payments will be cut by hundreds of thousands of dollars for each of the next five years under CMS’ fiscal year 2008 inpatient prospective payment system final rule. The agency released the final rule earlier this month...The bulk of CMS’ cuts result from the agency’s assumption that hospitals will change the way they code patients’ medical conditions in order to receive higher Medicare payments under the program’s new coding system