Rural Community Hospital Demonstration whitepaper

Since May 2005, Columbus Community Hospital has participated in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program.

To participate in this program, a hospital had to be located in a rural area, have fewer than 51 acute care inpatient beds, offer 24-hour emergency services and not be designated as a critical access hospital.

The RCHD program was created to test cost-based reimbursement for small rural hospitals that were too small to survive under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS), but were too large to be critical access hospitals.

With CCH's participation in this program, we have been able to update our facility, increase our physician recruitment, upgrade our equipment and information technology and offer a growing number of programs and services to the community. Without the demonstration and the increased payments it provided, we may have had to cut back on some of the less profitable, but still valuable, services.

Please take a moment to review our RCHD whitepaper for a glimpse of how the demonstration has impacted CCH to meet the growing health care needs of the community and the surrounding area.