Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, which added four inpatient beds three years ago, says it should now be licensed as a hospital and entitled to hospital-level reimbursements, according to an article on the Outpatient Surgery website.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which makes such determinations, says the percentage of inpatient business at Wills is too small to justify hospital licensure. Wills has said that if filled every day, the facility's four beds would account for 17 percent of its cases.
Effective Nov. 1, Wills will be terminated from the Medicare program unless it agrees to cease all inpatient care at the facility and unless it completes a re-survey to prove to CMS that it ended those services.
Wills would then seek to obtain an ambulatory surgical center license.