This is becoming a hot topic these days, especially in other areas with not for profit hospitals. The new CEO of Grady just put out a request for other hospitals to stop sending their charity cases to their facility when they can provide the services.
Also, there's the Desperate Hospitals series on the blog, and are some of the non profits strapped to the limits due to charity services? A kind deed by the part of Kaiser for Grady Hospital in recent days. More here on the status of many of the 
hospitals in the US today in general.
Perhaps a national audit could be in order to check and verify the status of all hospitals in the US to see what percentage of charity care is being provided by all at every level. As the line between big and small in the hospital business continues to grow, some of the smaller and budget tight hospitals are struggling for their very existence today, and then there are some, like the Century City Hospital on the outskirts of Beverly Hills that nobody wanted to help. BD
Front and center is Provena Covenant Medical Center in Illinois, which has been battling with the state to preserve its tax exemption at risk over the amount of charity care the hospital provides.
The Chicago Tribune reports the hospital in Urbana will appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn a ruling last month by a state appeals court that put the hospital’s tax exemption in jeopardy. That ruling reversed a lower court’s decision that let the hospital keep its tax-exempt status.
Health Blog : Illinois Nonprofit Hospital Battles to Protect Tax Exemption
Two other religious-owned hospital chains in Illinois, Advocate and Resurrection, are also under fire for low rates of charity care. AFSCME and SEIU seem to be going after these two, in addition to trying to organize workers.
ReplyDeleteSome interesting statistics (although out-of-date) can be found here. Some of the hospitals with the lowest numbers are located in wealthy DuPage County, which has seen a large influx of lower-income families attracted by the large number of service-sector jobs available...
I would think there needs to be an audit of public hospital subsidies for charity care before we start tearing into the non-public non-profit..i work at a hospital in the northeast that has the charity care policies as the public hospitals but does not receive all the subsidies that the state and feds pass on to them..the public hospitals in our area get paid dollar for dollar charity care and have easier access to get patients signed up on public programs..you can see the major capital projects the public hospitals are capable of funding at the tax payers expense..i have to believe that some of the motivation is to capture the markets from the non-public..i would suggest that public hospitals should be held up to the same scrutiny or maybe non-profit's should seek to become public to insure a steady stream of tax payers monies..
ReplyDeleteThis is a heated area for sure. What really gets spent and where for healthcare. Look at the recent 5m contribution from Kaiser to the financially troubled Grady, who the CEO states is getting more than it's fair share. Kaiser gets a nice benefit of tax shelters for this contribution too and yes Grady gets a shot in the arm, but only part of the puzzle.
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