Lawrence + Memorial Hospital v. Burwell

RAKOFF, District Judge:

Under the Medicare Act, a hospital’s classification as “rural” or “urban” may affect the amount of reimbursement that the hospital receives for providing medical services, as well as the hospital’s access to certain medical programs. But a hospital can reasonably be viewed as “rural” in some respects {e.g., it is situated in a rural area and attends to the needs of a rural population) and “urban” in other respects (e.g., it needs to attract trained staff from nearby urban areas and to do so must pay urban wage rates). To accommodate this possibility, the Medicare…