Valley City, ND (KCSi-T.V. News -– Congressman Earl Pomeroy and Mercy Hospital Chief Executive Officer, Keith Heuser, hosted Deputy Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Jonathan Blum, on Wednesday, August 25, 2010.
Discussion centered around proposed federal regulations that would mandate new requirements when providing outpatient therapeutic services in rural hospitals.
Pomeroy and Blum toured Mercy Hospital in Valley City, and met with local health care leaders to discuss why these proposed requirements will be difficult for Mercy Hospital to implement, and reducing access to much-needed health care in the area and are clinically unnecessary.

Pomeroy said, “I greatly appreciate that Deputy Administrator Blum came to Valley City today to learn first-hand the real world impact of his proposed requirements for direct supervision of outpatient therapeutic services. “I feel that this meeting was an important step toward reversing those proposals, and I urge Deputy Administrator Blum and the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid to reconsider them.”

Earlier this year, CMS attempted to implement new direct supervision requirements for outpatient therautic services, but issued a temporary delay in enforcement through the end of the 2010 after Congressman Pomeroy and CAH administrators voiced strong concerns about the impact of these proposals on access to services in rural communities. CMS has once again proposed similar regulations to be in effect on January 1, 2011.

Earlier Wednesday, Pomeroy and Blum held discussions on the issue, at a roundtable, in Bismarck.

Pomeroy is a senior member of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and Co-Chair of the Rural Health Coalition

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