RCW 74.60.005

(1) The purpose of this chapter is to provide for a safety net assessment on certain Washington hospitals, which will be used solely to augment funding from all other sources and thereby support additional payments to hospitals for medicaid services as specified in this chapter.

(2) The legislature finds that federal health care reform will result in an expansion of medicaid enrollment in this state and an increase in federal financial participation.

(3) In adopting this chapter, it is the intent of the legislature: (a) To impose a hospital safety net assessment to be used solely for the purposes specified in this chapter; (b) To generate approximately one billion dollars per state fiscal biennium in new state and federal funds by disbursing all of that amount to pay for medicaid hospital services and grants to certified public expenditure and critical access hospitals, except costs of administration as specified in this chapter, in the form of additional payments to hospitals and managed care plans, which may not be a substitute for payments from other sources, but which include quality improvement incentive payments under RCW 74.09.611; (c) To generate two hundred ninety-two million dollars per biennium during the 2021-2023 and 2023-2025 biennia in new funds to be used in lieu of state general fund payments for medicaid hospital services; (d) That the total amount assessed not exceed the amount needed, in combination with all other available funds, to support the payments authorized by this chapter; (e) To condition the assessment on receiving federal approval for receipt of additional federal financial participation and on continuation of other funding sufficient to maintain aggregate payment levels to hospitals for inpatient and outpatient services covered by medicaid, including fee-for-service and managed care, at least at the rates the state paid for those services on July 1, 2015, as adjusted for current enrollment and utilization; and (f) For each of the two biennia starting with fiscal year 2022 to generate: (i) Four million dollars for new integrated evidence-based psychiatry residency program slots that did not receive state funding prior to 2016 at the integrated psychiatry residency program at the University of Washington; and (ii) Eight million two hundred thousand dollars for family medicine residency program slots that did not receive state funding prior to 2016, as directed through the family medicine residency network at the University of Washington, for slots where residents are employed by hospitals.