⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The D.C. Circuit hears two Oklahoma hospitals challenge a Medicare payment decision about psychiatric care for children. In two thousand seven, INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center ran Spencer, and INTEGRIS Bass Baptist Health Center ran Meadowlake, both child and adolescent psychiatric facilities away from the hospitals' main campuses. Both offered acute psychiatric care and longer residential treatment; Oklahoma Medicaid classified about ninety-five percent of Spencer's patient days and ninety-eight percent of Meadowlake's as residential care. Medicare's disproportionate-share adjustment gives hospitals extra payments linked to the share of patients with low incomes; one part of its formula counts inpatient days for Medicaid-eligible patients. The hospitals included those days, but a Medicare contractor removed them, reducing the hospitals' expected payments. An HHS review board upheld the exclusion, and a federal district judge later ruled for the agency. The hospitals will argue that these units were never certified as separate psychiatric parts of their hospitals, so their patient days should count. HHS will argue that the units mainly provided residential rather than acute hospital care, so those days fall outside this Medicare adjustment. Stephanie Webster will argue for the hospitals; Alexander White will defend the agency's decision.

Baptist Healthcare of Oklahoma, LLC v. Kennedy (No. 25-5358) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argued September 24, 2026.