Hospitals across the state saw charity care decline from $328 million in 2013 to $164 million in 2015, according to the article. At the same time, bad debt statewide dropped from $276 million to $188 million during the same time period, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
Officials attribute the charity care decline to greater use of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion.
Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care specifically saw charity care decline from $56.4 million in 2013 to $29.8 million in 2015, according to Rachel Roller, senior vice president of community and government relations for the health system. Still, she said Aurora saw uncompensated care costs rise slightly during that period. Aurora has 15 facilities, including five in Kenosha County.
But that doesn’t mean Aurora and other health systems don’t face losses.
“As the state’s largest charitable organization, our uncompensated care in 2015 was nearly $360 million, and in Kenosha alone it was more than $10 million, the latter representing a 4 percent increase over 2013,” Ms. Roller said in the report. “Charity Care is one component of uncompensated care, and while that has gone down in recent years, we’ve seen significant increases in other uncompensated areas, such as Medicaid shortfalls, that offset it.”
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