2.18.2022
Vital Signs
UW Department of Medicine
Dr. Ann Sheehy, associate professor and division head, Hospital Medicine, was an expert witness in a nationwide class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Medicare Advocacy against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The lawsuit and subsequent March 2020 ruling “paved the way for Medicare patients who are initially admitted by a physician as hospital inpatients—but whose status is later changed to observation by their hospital—to appeal to Medicare for coverage as hospital inpatients, so that they may be eligible for Medicare coverage of skilled nursing facility care after discharge.”
In February 2022, a Connecticut federal appeals court upheld the March 2020 ruling. Dr. Sheehy, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, has conducted research and advised policy-makers at the federal level about the implications of observation status policy changes for patients and health care systems for several years. She hopes that this appeal is the final step before the Department of Health and Human Service implements the decision.
Dr. Sheehy is a founding member of the CHDR Executive Committee.