Legislative Preview: Hospitals’ Priorities for Advancing Florida’s Health Care System
2/1/2024
This article first appeared as a column in the 2025 February issue of South Florida Hospital News
By Mary Mayhew, FHA President and CEO
The 2025 regular legislative session does not start until March 4, but there are interim committee meetings already underway, and bill filing is ongoing. In addition, with Gov. Ron DeSantis calling for a special legislative session before March to address several issues relevant to hospitals, including immigration and hurricane recovery, the hospital industry is already engaged, raising their collective, united voice to continue advancing policy priorities needed to support modern, accessible health care for all Floridians.
Florida is diverse, and no hospital serves the same community. That’s why regulatory flexibility, not one-size-fits-all mandates, are essential to support their work to meet their communities’ care needs. They also need stable, predictable, and fair reimbursement and for their payer partners to adhere to clear, transparent, and reasonable standards for authorization and for payment.
Building on the state’s landmark health care investments during the 2024 legislative session, chiefly with the robust Live Healthy legislative package, Florida’s hospitals are united around several key policy priorities to continue improving Medicaid hospital reimbursements and enhancing outcomes for children and adults, strengthening and supporting our health care workforce, increasing payor accountability, enhancing behavioral health care, and reforming the medical malpractice system.
Below is a sample of the policy needs the Florida Hospital Association is prioritizing for 2025 to continue strengthening and advancing Florida’s world-class health care system.
First is strengthening the Medicaid program to reflect the resource-intensive care and services hospitals provide to patients with complex needs. From increasing Medicaid payments to more closely and accurately reflects the costs of care for adults with complex medical needs to supporting hospital care coordination teams that are managing medical and social services for Medicaid patients with significant needs, the Medicaid system needs to be modernized to keep up with modern and sophisticated health care delivery.
Second, with Medicaid and commercial health insurance plans delaying payment of $3.8 billion in claims beyond 30 days, enforcing prompt payment of clean claims is a priority for hospitals. As individuals, we don’t have the option of not paying our rent, car payments, or utility bills beyond the billing cycle, and if we do, there are fines and penalties for late payment. It is only fair that health insurance companies promptly remit payment for covered and authorized services already provided to patients.
Third, as we work to invest in the future health care workforce by continuing to grow funding for graduate medical education, we can also do more to encourage existing physician talent to practice in Florida. Capping the non-economic damages in medical malpractice claims is critical to bring down the exorbitant costs of medical malpractice premiums that discourage physicians from practicing in Florida and constrain patients’ access to care. In addition, without caps on non-economic damages, physicians in certain high-risk specialties like obstetrics are less likely to practice in the state. Not addressing the medical malpractice crisis will only worsen the existing physician shortage, estimated at 18,000 too few physicians by 2030. Texas’ experience is illustrative. When it implemented comprehensive tort reform in 2003, including caps on non-economic damages, it experienced a 44 percent increase in the number of physicians actively practicing in the state.
Florida’s hospitals are indispensable for the state to prosper, to thrive, to attract the best and brightest, and to be the economic powerhouse that it is. When lawmakers support hospitals, they are supporting a strong economy, healthy children and seniors, a present and productive workforce, and the opportunity for every resident to succeed and thrive. Together, we can make Florida a national leader for health care access and outcomes.