Kettering Medical Center & Kettering College:
The Challenge of Accreditation and CMS Funding
H.R. 5227 – The MEND Act
- Kettering College (KC) is accredited by the North Central Association of College and Schools (NCA), which is one of six regional institutional accreditors in the United States. The commission of NCA overseeing Kettering College is The Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The HLC is requiring Kettering College (and all colleges accredited by them) to become separately incorporated from their parent organizations. The reason for this is that some for-profit schools have failed to demonstrate appropriate independence from their parent organizations and have been sending revenue from tuition to the parent organization for use on non-educational purposes. The federal government has been instrumental in pushing the regional accrediting bodies to correct this situation, and we expect all of them to follow suit.
- KC is currently, like many schools across the country, not separately incorporated from its parent hospital, Kettering Medical Center (KMC). The new HLC requirement for KC to separately incorporate creates a significant problem: the end of CMS funding related to the function of the college. Each year, KMC receives significant CMS reimbursement in order to operate a health sciences-based college. This funding is provided for the same reason that CMS funds physician
- Graduate Medical Education: to relieve the critical shortage of health care professionals that serve millions of Americans in our nation’s health care system. CMS regulations currently would require suspension of this funding under a separate incorporation model.
- As a not-for-profit, loss of CMS funds to KC would result in one or more of the following:
- Large increases in tuition. This would likely depress enrollment in badly needed health fields, turn away students from less affluent populations and increase student loan default rates.
- Loss of CMS funds will likely result in an in interruption in the training of nurses, radiological technicians, sonographers, physician’s assistants, and respiratory therapists.
- A significant negative economic impact on the local economy.
- SOLUTION: Congressman Aaron Schock has introduced legislation, H.R. 5227, the MEND Act, which would allow separately incorporated colleges to continue to receive Medicare pass through dollars under the new Higher Learning Commission’s accreditation rules. This narrowly tailored, budget-neutral legislation is supported by the Higher Learning Commission, the American Hospital Association, and various state organizations across the country. This fix will ensure that none of the many schools affected will lose Medicare funding due only to an accreditation body’s incorporation rule change. We are currently working to have companion legislation introduced in the Senate.