Ceiling
Ceiling is the aggregate upper limit on the amount of a hospital's net Medicare inpatient operating costs that the program will recognize for payment purposes. For each cost reporting period, the ceiling is determined by multiplying the updated target amount, as defined in this paragraph, for that period by the number of Medicare discharges during that period. For a hospital-within-a-hospital, as described in 412.22 of this chapter, the number of Medicare discharges in a cost reporting period does not include discharges of a patient to another hospital in the same building on or on the same campus, if -
(A) The patient is subsequently readmitted to the hospital-within-a-hospital directly from the other hospital; and
(B) The hospital-within-a-hospital has discharged to the other hospital and subsequently readmitted more than 5 percent (that is, in excess of 5.0 percent) of the total number of Medicare inpatients discharged from the hospital-within-a-hospital in that cost reporting period.