Hospitals & The Community: Dedicated to Their Communities

Hospitals provide hundreds of millions of dollars in charity care every year, but also benefit their communities in a multitude of other ways. That’s why they are constantly working to identify needs in their communities and offering new programs and services.

• Illinois hospitals provide $1.5 billion in uncompensated care annually. About 1.7 million Illinoisans lack health insurance and hundreds of thousands more are underinsured.
• Illinois hospitals have adopted voluntary guidelines on charity care and collection practices for the uninsured that provide free care to patients whose income is at or below the poverty level and discounts to those up to two times the poverty level. Many hospitals have even more generous polices than these.
• Illinois hospitals have supported groundbreaking state laws to help the uninsured: The Fair Patient Billing Act in 2006 and the Hospital Uninsured Patient Discount Act in 2008 – both landmark pieces of legislation and the first of their kind in the country.
• Hospitals continue to provide critical services, even at a financial loss, such as: emergency and trauma care, neonatal intensive care, burn care, health education, AIDS care, outpatient clinics, and research. In addition, they provide services specifically that meet needs in their communities, such as home health care, ambulance and transportation services, CPR classes, teen pregnancy education, drug rehabilitation, and many more.
• The Illinois Community Benefits Act requires non-profit hospitals to file annual reports with the Illinois Attorney General’s office that list all the benefits they provide to their communities. These reports allow local communities to hold their hospital accountable and ensure it is meeting the needs of its community. For a full report on the wide range of benefits that Illinois hospitals provide to their communities, click here.
• Reports filed by 109 hospitals across the state show that they provided community benefits of more than $4.6 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010. The reports indicate that those hospitals have increased their community benefits by 26 percent and their charity care by 124 percent over the past five years.

As hospitals struggle to maintain financial viability and serve their communities, they face even greater challenges during these tough economic times and need support from their government partners.

• On average, Medicare and Medicaid patients account for more than half of the revenues of Illinois hospitals. Each of these programs pay, on average, less than the cost of providing that care. Medicare covers about 90 percent of the cost and Medicaid covers only 75 percent (without the Hospital Assessment Program). As a result, Illinois hospitals are absorbing Medicare and Medicaid shortfalls of more than $2.2 billion annually, and nearly one-third of Illinois hospitals lose money in providing patient care.

Illinois hospitals have shown by their actions, not just their words, their commitment to their communities. They ensure that their uninsured patients are treated compassionately not only with medical care, but also with financial counseling. Placing a greater financial burden on hospitals will not solve the uninsured crisis. It may, in fact, put some out of business and eliminate the current safety net for the uninsured.