Budget Amendment ID: FY2022-S3-560

EHS 560

Health Equity Fund

Messrs. Finegold, O'Connor and Gomez, Ms. Moran, Messrs. Brady, Cronin and Pacheco moved that the proposed new text be amended in section 2, in item XXXX-XXXX, by inserting the following section :

For a Health Equity Fund, administered by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, to support programs that ensure access to quality, affordable healthcare; provided, that the Fund will be used for grants or financial assistance that may be offered to a municipality or other public entity, a non-profit entity, or hospital; provided further, that such grants or financial assistance shall support programs that are located i) in a gateway municipality, as defined in Section 3A of Chapter 23A of the General Laws and ii) in one of the twelve communities with the highest proportion of COVID-19 cases per 100,000, as publicly reported by the Department of Public Health as of March 18th, 2020; provided further that grants or other financial assistance shall be awarded in a manner that promotes geographic, social, racial, and economic equity; provided further that not less than $25,000,000 in such grants or financial assistance be expended to preserve access to acute care hospitals in eligible communities that experience health disparities as a result of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or other status; provided further that such acute care hospitals had unmitigated hospital financial losses after both the federal provider relief and the additional state fiscal year 2020 supplemental payments for hospitals financially at-risk due to the COVID-19 emergency as measured by having 1) an audited fiscal year 2020 hospital loss from operations in excess of negative four percent of total revenue, and 2) continued hospital operating losses in fiscal year 2021; those acute care hospitals shall receive a state supplemental payment of one a half times their fiscal year 2020 state supplemental payment to hospitals financially at-risk due to the COVID-19 emergency.