News Releases

Members Expect $8.4 Million Benefit Thanks to Wage Index Project

Preliminary results from The Center's 2011 wage index project demonstrating an expected $8.4 million increase to the region's reimbursement were officially released at a Reimbursement Forum meeting on March 24.  For months, The Center for Health Affairs and its contracted wage index professionals from the Reimbursement Alliance (RA) Group have been working with the region's hospitals on a project to maximize wage index.  Thanks to the work of the RA Group, Greater Cleveland hospitals can expect the average hourly wage to increase from its initial projection of $31.58 to $31.90.  The region's wage index factor is expected to increase from its initial projection of 89.31 percent to 90.19 percent, resulting in an additional $6.8 million for inpatient reimbursement and an additional $1.7 million in outpatient reimbursement.

Wage index is a factor used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to account for regional differences in the cost of wages in the Medicare reimbursement formula.  The wage index assigned to a region by CMS can have a significant impact on the level of reimbursement that region receives for Medicare patients, which is why it is so important for Northeast Ohio hospitals to regularly review the data used to derive the wage index and present it to CMS as advantageously as possible.