Medi-Cal: disproportionate share hospital replacement payment adjustments.

Existing law provides for the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid program provisions. Existing law establishes the Medi-Cal Hospital/Uninsured Care Demonstration Project Act. The act revises hospital supplemental payment methodologies in the Medi-Cal program to maximize the use of federal funds consistent with federal Medicaid law and to stabilize the distribution of funding for hospitals that provide care to Medi-Cal beneficiaries and uninsured patients. This demonstration project provides funding, in supplementation of Medi-Cal reimbursement, to various hospitals, such as designated public hospitals, specified nondesignated public hospitals, and private hospitals, in accordance with certain provisions relating to disproportionate share hospitals. Existing law establishes several continuously appropriated funds, including the Demonstration Disproportionate Share Hospital Fund, the Private Hospital Supplemental Fund, the Nondesignated Public Hospital Supplemental Fund, and the Distressed Hospital Fund, to be expended by the department for purposes of the act. This bill would require the payment of Medi-Cal disproportionate share hospital replacement payment adjustments to any eligible hospital that is a nondesignated public hospital. By expanding the purposes of continuously appropriated funds by authorizing payment of appropriated funds to additional hospital facilities, this bill would make an appropriation. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.