Sec. 12. 22 MRSA §8709, sub-§1-A is enacted to read:

1-A.__Hospitals; standardized accounting template.__When filing the annual financial information required by subsection 1, a hospital licensed in accordance with chapter 405 shall submit its information electronically using standardized accounting template software designed by the Governor's Office of Health Policy and Finance and provided to the hospital by the organization.

Sec. 13. Standardized reporting and voluntary limits to control growth of hospital costs.

1. Voluntary restraint. To control the rate of growth of the costs of hospital services, the Legislature requests that each hospital licensed under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 22, chapter 405 voluntarily restrain cost increases and operating margins in accordance with this section. The targets apply to each hospital's fiscal year beginning on or after July 1, 2005 and remain in effect through the end of each hospital's fiscal year beginning on or after July 1, 2007.

A. Each hospital is asked to voluntarily hold its operating margin to no more than 3%, as measured using data submitted to the Maine Health Data Organization using the electronic standardized accounting template software required by Title 22, section 8709, subsection 1-A. For purposes of this section, a hospital's operating margin is calculated by dividing its operating income, as computed in the template, by its total operating revenue, as computed in the template.

B. Each hospital is asked to voluntarily restrain its increase in its expense per casemix-adjusted inpatient and volume-adjusted outpatient discharge to no more than the forecasted increase in the hospital market basket index for the coming federal fiscal year, as published in The Federal Register, when the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services publishes the Medicare program's hospital inpatient prospective payment system rates for the coming federal fiscal year. For purposes of this paragraph, the measure of a hospital's expense per casemix-adjusted inpatient and volume-adjusted outpatient discharge is calculated by:

(1) Calculating the hospital's total hospital-only expenses;