09/03/2025
Last month, there was a worrisome discussion about UCHealth winning a lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), requiring a nearly $60M settlement. The suggestion was that rural facilities that had received Medicaid funding (in the form of CHASE funds generated through provider fees) would have to return a portion of their funding. For us, that would have been a staggering $1. 3 million.
The good news is that Yuma Hospital and Clinics does NOT have to pay $1.3 MILLION to UCHealth!!!!
UCHealth and HCPF reached an agreement. HCPF will reclassify the two UCHealth facilities as requested, and UCHealth will waive all changes to the 2023-24 CHASE distribution that would have required rural governmental hospitals to return $59.7 million. In addition, UCHealth donated $5.7 million to “support hospitals that are negatively impacted by the reclassification of UCHealth’s hospitals in the 2024-2025 CHASE model.”
The 2024-2025 CHASE model calculations have not been released so it is not clear what the impact of having two additional (large) hospitals included in the CHASE fee distribution will be. But kicking the can down the road a bit means we can worry about that later – and that feels more hopeful than returning a million dollars.
It’s like Christmas arrived early on the Eastern Plains – we’ll worry about the credit card bills in January! 😊
Aurora, Colo. (August 26, 2025) – UCHealth and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) have reached an agreement that will appropriately reclassify UCHealth hospitals in the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE) hospital provider fee pro...
