Patients with low incomes may have a hard time getting free or discounted care at nonprofit hospitals because they don't know about the help available to them, according to The Washington Post.
To illustrate the issue, the newspaper described the case of a patient who received emergency care at nonprofit St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., and ended up being reported to a collections agency when she couldn't pay her debt. The patient said she asked the hospital for a financial aid application but never got one.
The medical center was sued by the state attorney general's office, which accused St. Joseph of erecting barriers to free or discounted care, and the medical center settled the lawsuit without admitting wrongdoing.
Federal law requires hospitals with tax-exempt status to give free or discounted care to patients with low incomes to remain tax-exempt.
But overall, a Kaiser Health News analysis cited by the Post found that 45 percent of nonprofit hospitals send bills to patients with low incomes although they qualify for free or discounted care.
Hospitals estimated they had written off $2.7 billion in bills sent to patients who likely would have qualified for financial assistance at the hospital if they had applied, according to the analysis, which used annual reports submitted to the IRS.
The Oct. 11 Post report comes as hospitals and health systems have been in the news recently for their debt collection practices and lawsuits they file against patients. The University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, Richmond-based Virginia Commonwealth University Health System and Memphis, Tenn.-based Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare have all announced this year changes to their collection practices after coming under scrutiny for suing patients.
Read the full Post report here.
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