Charity care cuts leave some hospitals hurting

Headnote

For-profit CarePoint Health says caring for large amount of undocumented immigrants changes its business model

Good news: Medicaid expansion has succeeded in increasing the number of insured individuals.

Bad news: Medicaid expansion has reduced the need for charity care in the state.

Results: The system has left out nearly 1 million people in New Jersey, and some hospitals are hurting from the plummeting budget.

Gov. Chris Christie's administration recently announced further cuts, to the tune of $25 million, for the 2018 fiscal year.

That's not good for some hospital systems, including for-profit CarePoint Health.

Often criticized for its high prices, CarePoint said its business model is needed because of the shortfall from charity care payments. CarePoint executives say it sees a large population of undocumented immigrants - and, in some cases, the patients who aren't reimbursed at all, due to lack of proper documentation.

"Most of the charity care patients are undocumented immigrants," Chief Strategy Officer Kirat Kharode said.

Charity care patients are part of the health system's self-paying patient budget, which accounts for 10 percent of payment sources.

In documents shared exclusively with NJBIZ, CarePoint outlined its charity care population breakdown of January' through March of this y'ear to show how much of its charity care patients are undocumented:

* Of about 18,800 self-pay patient visits, at least 10,500 were charity care.

* More than 75 percent of those charity care patients were undocumented immigrants.

* About 5,500 individuals visited the emergency department, of which 1,500 were charity care patients.

* At least 73 percent of those charity care patients were undocumented immigrants.

These numbers only figure to increase.

Suzanne lanni, CEO and president of the Hospital Alliance of New Jersey, said that Hudson County has the largest population of new immigrants in New Jersey.

Caring for immigrants is difficult. Because most do not have any type of formal insurance, they will only seek treatment when situations become dire. And when that's the case, they usually seek out a costly emergency room visit.

CarePoint has...