Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals could lose some or all of their CARES Act Provider Relief Fund grant money and the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania is asking members of the state’s congressional delegation to intervene on their behalf to prevent it.

At issue are financial reporting requirements that at first directed hospitals to estimate their anticipated revenue losses and extra expenses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in one way and then shifted to a new approach.  The first grant distribution was based on the original reporting requirements, and now, hospitals fear that the change in reporting requirements could leave them vulnerable to a demand that they return some, much, or all of that grant money.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced one set of reporting requirement in June and then proposed modifying them in September.  In response to widespread expressions of concern, including from SNAP, HHS revised those proposed changes – but not enough, according to many stakeholders, leaving them concerned that HHS would ask them to return some of their grant money.  Now, SNAP is asking the same members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation who asked HHS to reconsider the reporting requirements to do so again.

See SNAP’s letter to the delegation asking its members to sign onto a bipartisan letter asking HHS to revise its reporting requirements once again.  Go here to see the letter members of Congress are being asked to sign.