Pentagon halting allotment to Carthage hospital

CARTHAGE — The proposed elimination of a program that supports nonmilitary hospitals near Army posts will not cost Carthage Area Hospital much money — but the news came as a big surprise to hospital officials who had received no notification from the Defense Department.

The cost-saving measure at the Pentagon will cost the hospital about $9,000 a month, CEO Water S. Becker said. If the 78-bed facility lost that monthly federal income, administrators would "adjust accordingly," he said Thursday.

"It's not that big of a hit in itself to us," he said by telephone. "You just tighten your belt; that's what you do."

The hospital receives the monthly allotment, as do other nonmilitary hospitals near bases throughout the country that have fewer than 100 beds, since it is considered a sole community hospital. Mr. Becker said Carthage Area Hospital, 1001 West St., applied for that status just over a decade ago.

"We were small, and were the only hospital in the community," he said. "Every year, every inpatient for Medicare we get a little bit of subsidy because of our status. Military is federal government, Medicare is federal government, so military patients that come in to give birth, they have to pay the tack-on rate."

Defense officials say they intend to gradually eliminate the subsidies, which officials say are paid to a "small number" of facilities around the country. A Pentagon spokeswoman did not return a call seeking elaboration.

The situation at Carthage was a surprise not only to Mr. Becker but to the office of Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, which caught up with the facts surrounding the program only after Rep. Joseph Wilson, R-S.C., asked Army Secretary John M. McHugh about it at a hearing Wednesday and revealed that a hospital near Fort Drum was among those slated to lose money.

Mr. McHugh, who represented Northern New York in Congress from 1993 to 2009, said at the hearing that the program originally included Carthage Area Hospital because the number of obstetrician-gynecologists was not enough to handle the number of births expected from families at Fort Drum. Over the years, the money helped the hospital rectify that shortage.

He said it never was intended to be a permanent program.

Times Washington correspondent Marc Heller contributed to this report.