As the worsening economy starts to impact the health care sector, Vanderbilt University Medical Center expects to provide more charity care than ever.
Every year hospitals incur millions of dollars of losses when they care for people who can’t afford to pay. In Davidson County, Vanderbilt loses the most. The total is expected to be nearly $300 million this year, up from $225 million last year.
Chief Financial Officer Warren Beck says they are starting to see more people who can’t pay deductibles, as employers start to cover less of those costs. Beck also says Vanderbilt bears so much of the burden because it has every kind of specialist.
“We become a logical place for sick people to come to and of course there are a lot of uninsured that have some very serious illnesses that they can’t get treated in community hospitals.”
Nashville General Hospital had the next highest level of charity care at $52 million. Southern Hills Medical Center provided the least, at $23 million. Beck says Vanderbilt’s emergency room has been trying to push some of the uninsured to other facilities.
“If patients are not truly of emergency nature, that we advise them of clinics in the community.”
The state and federal governments do make direct payments to safety net hospitals to make up for some of the shortfall and Vanderbilt has received about $25 million over the last two years. But all nine Davidson County hospitals lost nearly half-a-billion dollars in charity care last year alone.
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