Court Opinion

ID: 8911815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 03:17:31.078923+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:08:35.720886
License: Public Domain

SNEED, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
I concur in the result reached by Judge Fitzgerald’s opinion. However, I am reluctant to join in dicta that suggests that Mercy can achieve reimbursement merely by ceasing to charge all outpatients for outpatient clinic services. Perhaps under all the relevant facts presented by a particular case that would be a proper result; but it is better, I think, not to prejudge the issue. In addition, it is unnecessary, in my view, to charge the -Secretary with arbitrary conduct that does not control the judgment of this court. It would be more appropriate for us merely to suggest that it might be arbitrary under proper circumstances not to allow “a hospital to avoid the apparent bar to allocating such costs [educational diagnosis and treatment of planning activities] as educational costs upon a showing that the patient care activities involved are primarily dictated by the objectives of an overriding educational program.” See p. 909.