JEFFREY SHELTON

OSF lobbied Congress on Health care Reform issues - specifically the House reform bill and the Senate reform bill. We asked for support of the following: Support of expansion of the 340B program, Minimize the power of the MAC or super MedPac agency, support nursing education payments, support a "fix" for physician payments under Medicare, increase the FMAP in Illinois, consider torte reform, consider careful timing of the reduction in DSH payments to hospitals, some form ofunder insured/uninsured coverage, support of right to life and no government funding of abortions, and general quality reform issues.

The OSF Healthcare System asked for support of the National Trauma Center Stabilization Act (S. 733 or H.R. 936). These bills are intended to provide federal funding ($100 - $125 million) for the core mission, uncompensated care and emergency needs of trauma centers. This legislation would reauthorize the Trauma Care Grant Program. We also asked for support of preserving Hospice services and rates. We specifically asked our Legislators to sign on to a letter to be sent to the President in support of Hospice. We asked our Legislators to support the "fix" of the Medicare physician fee schedules and the SRG formula. This fix is necessary to assure the continued access to physician services in our communities. We addressed our concerns over the instability of physician reimbursement and the difficulty of recruiting physicians to central Illinois; and, the proposal to increase the usage of Radiology Benefit Managers that are cumbersome, costly and are not quality driven. We asked our Legislators to protect Home Care services. The Presidents budget calls for significant cuts to Home Health reimbursement. Hospital based and affiliated Home Health is NOT operating at high margins and will sustain significant losses if reimbursement is reduced as much as 5.5% from 2009 rates. This will create significant access issues in all markets, more significantly in rural markets. This may also contribute to increased readmission rates, higher cost of post acute care and a decline in the quality of post acute care. We asked our Legislators to generally support our communities, hospitals and providers in the upcoming Health care reform discussions.