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Committee advances bill replacing Hospital Transformation Program with Hospital Quality Incentive Payment program
Summary
The House Health and Human Services Committee voted 11–0 to send House Bill 14-32 to the Committee of the Whole. Sponsors said the bill replaces the Hospital Transformation Program with a Hospital Quality Incentive Payment (HQIP) framework intended to reduce administrative burdens on rural hospitals and align measures with national standards.
The Colorado House Health and Human Services Committee on May 12 voted 11–0 to forward House Bill 14-32 as amended to the Committee of the Whole. The bill replaces the existing Hospital Transformation Program (HTP) with a new Hospital Quality Incentive Payment program (HQIP) and adds language placing design decisions under the Colorado Health Care Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE) board.
Representative Soper, the bill sponsor, told the committee the strike-below removes a program that had become overly burdensome for rural hospitals and replaces it with a framework that keeps decisionmaking with CHASE. "Just overnight, this bill saved for example, Delta's hospital over 1000000 dollars," Representative Soper said, describing the strike-below as the negotiated replacement for HTP.
Sponsors and Department witnesses said the change aims to reduce administrative fees and penalties that resulted when state reporting deadlines and department data delivery did not align with hospital operations. "Measures need to be aligned where possible with other programs," Josh Block, chief financial officer at the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, said in support of the bill, adding the department backs a simpler, more predictable program focused on outcomes.
Megan Axelrod, vice president of regulatory policy and federal affairs for the Colorado Hospital Association, testified that HTP’s design risked unfairly shifting funds from rural to urban hospitals and praised the HQIP replacement as grading hospitals only on things within their control.
The sponsors moved and the committee adopted a set of technical and cleanup amendments (L02–L05). Amendment L02 replaced the word "improvement" with "incentive" throughout the text and clarified that reimbursements could go up to 9% subject to CHASE board approval. The committee adopted the remaining amendments as technical clarifications.
Committee members also asked how the HQIP would incorporate a workplace-violence performance metric established in prior bipartisan legislation. Witnesses said the stakeholder process and CHASE governance will continue to inform that work so measures remain practical and clinically informed.
The committee voted 11–0 to recommend HB 14-32 as amended to the Committee of the Whole.
