Senate Bill 391 Summary

• Repeals previous hospital assessment provisions effective July 1, 2020, and establishes a new Hospital Assessment Act under Article 7B of Chapter 108A effective July 1, 2021.

• Imposes quarterly assessments on acute care hospitals (public and private separately) calculated as a percentage of each hospital's total costs, with assessments split 21% to public hospitals and 79% to private hospitals based on historical assessment shares.

• Assessment collection amounts derived from four components: managed care capitation payments, fee-for-service Medicaid payments, graduate medical education payments, and State's annual $110 million Medicaid payment (indexed annually by market basket percentage), minus intergovernmental transfer adjustments.

• Initial assessment rates set at 0.38% for public hospitals and 0.87% for private hospitals for the July 1, 2021 quarter, with subsequent quarters calculated through a reconciliation process that accounts for actual collections.

• Requires Department of Health and Human Services to report hospital status changes to legislative committees within 60 days and propose replacement inflation factors by January 1, 2026; prohibits assessments from being passed to patients and allows inclusion as allowable hospital costs.