Specialty Hospital wins back $1.8M from DC

The District must return $1.8 million it wrongly withheld from Specialty Hospital of Washington-Capitol Hill because of two bureaucratic snafus, an administrative law judge has ruled. In January, Specialty sued the D.C. Health Care Finance Department, challenging a 2009 ruling that the 60-bed hospital was over-compensated by $4.8 million from 2005 to 2007. D.C. had had been holding back new payments to recoup the loss, causing cash flow problems, Specialty said. Since then, the hospital and the bureaucrats agreed to negotiate their differences on the 2006 and 2007 payments, but remained at odds over the 2005 payments. The District originally demanded the money back because the hospital missed a 180-day deadline to seek the funds, officials said.