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Hospitals Reaching Out to Communities to Provide More Charity Care
By Bruce Nelson, Vice President, SearchAmerica®, A part of Experian
It may come as a surprise to the general public, but millions of patients are automatically identified and enrolled in hospital-sponsored charity care programs nationwide. It is unlikely that your patients understand much about a hospital’s generosity, let alone the technologies that automate its community benefit programs. These charity care systems enable hospitals to execute their community benefit programs more effectively, providing medical services free of charge or at a significantly reduced rate to qualified patients — amounting to billions in savings annually to U.S. consumers. This practice is key to the mission of our nation’s not-for-profit health care networks.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult and time-consuming to manually identify all qualified patients and efficiently enroll them in a hospital’s charity care program. Doing so without automation is fraught with errors and inconsistencies, so many hospitals have taken a new approach for improved accuracy and consistency.
Over the years, these systems have greatly impacted the lives of millions of patients and their families who otherwise may not have received charity care. The following is an excerpt from an actual thank-you note from those who have seen the benefits of these systems firsthand:
“Our automated charity care screening system approved two patients yesterday. One's wife shed tears of gratitude. We were also able to approve another just now — a child whose father lost his regular job recently and is now making $9 per hour. This is a wonderful service that we are providing. The staff feels good and the patients are truly grateful that the financial stress has been lifted and they can focus on their health”
Automation means more charity benefits for your patients
Since 2001, SearchAmerica estimates that more than 5 million
low-income patients have been enrolled in charity care programs through
automated services from third-party providers.
These services rapidly identify patients who meet the criteria for a hospital’s charity care program, Medicaid or other financial assistance programs. Using data from third-party service providers ensures that each patient’s need is assessed based on his or her financial need, eliminating factors such as age, race and gender from the process.
More and more hospitals are having these systems routinely check all incoming patients to see whether they qualify for their community benefit program. This process ensures that all qualified patients are identified and eliminates any bias.
Automated qualification and enrollment processes connect patients with the programs that were designed to help them. These processes save the patients money, but just as importantly, they preserve their dignity by eliminating concentrated collection efforts.
Saving time and money for patients and hospitals
Hospitals need to reduce costs across their organizations but wish to do so
without negatively impacting their services or the patient’s satisfaction.
Third-party charity care services are one of very few methods that offer a
win-win scenario for the hospital and the patient by:
-
Reducing
enrollment time: Automating this step reduces the enrollment process to just
minutes, instead of the hour or more needed to manually process an
application. This saves a hospital’s financial counselors hours of time
spent on paperwork. Likewise, patients find out immediately whether they
qualify, eliminating added stress from their medical situation.
-
Improving
compliance with government regulations: Hospitals need to demonstrate their
commitment to serving their communities. Charity care services provide the
results and reporting needed to comply with the IRS’ 990 Form Schedule H and
other state and local requirements.
- Stopping unproductive collection efforts: Hospitals can save on their collection processes by eliminating any collection activities on patient accounts that qualify for charity care. Hospitals’ efforts can be better focused on those who have the ability to pay. In addition, patients enrolled in charity care programs eliminate the anxiety often caused by collection efforts on hospital bills that they are truly unable to pay.
Curing a nation’s misperception
Hospitals have been wrongly portrayed as organizations focused more on money
than care. Those of us in the health care industry know that this is not
true. How can we prove that we are living up to our mission? The clearest
answer is by demonstrating community benefit.
Unfortunately, health care networks often are unable to publicly demonstrate their mission of serving their communities. Manual and inconsistent qualification and enrollment processes offer varied results that often understate their level of generosity.
Using automated charity care services, health care networks can provide reliable statistics. This information shows their community benefit through the number of patients they have aided, both medically and financially, and the cost of these services absorbed by the health care network within their charity care program. Positive public relations are critical to every hospital.
Today’s public is
mostly unaware of the health care industry’s generosity to those in need
through their unique charity care programs. To address this issue, smart
hospitals are implementing strict processes and technologies to enroll all
qualified patients and use this information to show their communities their
commitment to their mission.
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