Splitting MSA slices hospital's funding.

• Position: Triad

It's not as though it has fewer patients, but 94-bed Lexington Memorial Hospital gets about $200,000 less in annual Medicare reimbursements than it did two years ago. That's due to a 2004 decision by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to split the Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem metropolitan statistical area into five pieces. Triad leaders complained that splintering what had been an eight-county, 1.5-million-resident region would dilute its influence and--after a three-year grace period--cost it federal money...