Hospitals have a new ploy. Hundreds of hospitals are now “double dipping” and classifying themselves as rural hospitals – even when they are in urban areas like New York and Los Angeles.

These large, wealthy hospitals – including NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Cleveland Clinic Hospital, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – are taking advantage of a 2016 policy change that allows them to be classified as both urban and rural facilities.

In 2017, three hospitals were dually classified, but in 2023, more than 400 were.

So how does double-dipping benefit these hospitals? They can tap into reimbursement programs intended for rural providers. This means that billions of taxpayer dollars set aside for rural healthcare are lining the pockets of uber-profitable, urban hospitals instead.

This trend is particularly alarming as Congress just allocated $50 billion in taxpayer dollars to rural health initiatives with the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill. Our lawmakers need to work to close this loophole, and Better Solutions will continue to expose hospitals and their tactics.