Central Georgia Health System Inc. in Macon is facing about $200 million in funding cuts over a 10-year period under the new health care law.

It is one of 1,500 hospitals across the country known as safety net providers who care for a large number of uninsured patients.

Even though the hospital system will gain a new source of revenue as more uninsured people gain coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government is cutting payments to Medicare and Medicaid programs.

We are certainly lucky we have a lot of managed care here, but we are the lead tertiary facility for central and south Georgia, and we see a great deal of Medicaid and Medicare business, said Bryan Forlines, assistant vice president of government relations and reimbursement for Central Georgia Health System Inc., the parent company for The Medical Center of Central Georgia, its rehabilitation facility and home health care program.

A tertiary facility is a regional referral center, and the Medical Center gets patients from smaller hospitals in the area.

This is a time of uncertainty for (safety net hospitals), said Stu Guterman, vice president of the Commonwealth Fund. On the one hand, they should be thrilled because a lot of the patients they treat will have payment attached to them. On the other, theyre losing some of the funding they rely on.

Cuts for Central Georgia Health System are expected to be significant.

We are looking at a lot of money over 10 years, Forlines said. This years impact is about $7 million in total cuts, including the sequester, and then it jumps to about $14 million the next year, and it starts going up pretty fast.

The sequester, or sequestration, refers to budget cuts of federal spending that began March 1, affecting nearly all entities receiving federal money.

For the hospital, the sequester has caused a 2-percent reduction in Medicare payments beyond all the other cuts, Forlines said. This cut began April 1.

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Health care law creates funding cuts, challenges for Macon hospital