AI-generated summary, not yet reviewed by Better Utah staff. Please consult the bill text.

Utah's Medicaid system requires hospitals to pay fees, called "provider assessments," that help fund health coverage for low-income patients; those funds flow through managed care companies called accountable care organizations (ACOs), which then pay hospitals for services provided to Medicaid patients. This bill adds a new category of "quality incentive" payments that ACOs can distribute to hospitals on top of existing payments, but only if the ACOs pass along at least 90% of those specific funds to hospitals. It also allows the state to use up to $200,000 per year from the Hospital Provider Assessment Expendable Revenue Fund to monitor whether ACOs are properly distributing these quality incentive funds to hospitals, and it adjusts the formula used to calculate the hospital assessment to account for these new incentive payments. The changes to the assessment and payment calculations are set to expire on July 1, 2028, unless extended by future legislation.