Developing organizational charity-care policies and procedures.
A lack of standards in healthcare organizations often makes it difficult to consistently define and report charity care. Accurately documenting services provided to patients who are unwilling or unable to pay can be difficult for many organizations. Temple East, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, established several policies in an attempt to clarify its charity-care provisions. Among the organization's guiding principles were that all unreimbursed costs of caring for patients who are either uninsured or enrolled in a Medicaid program and all bad debt directly attributable to services to low-income or uninsured patients should be included as charity care. The organization also determined that contractual allowances and disallowances for payers other than government payers should not be included as charity care. Determining clear, unambiguous definitions for several terms related to charity care also helped the organization better track and document its charity-care services--a task that will become increasingly important for hospitals in the future.
Lefton
Ray B
RB
Temple East, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. leftonrb@te.temple.edu
D000066:Accounting / Q000592:standards; D002608:Charities / Q000191:economics*; D004608:Eligibility Determination; D005377:Financial Management, Hospital / Q000379:methods*; D006786:Hospitals, Urban / Q000191:economics*; D017057:Medically Uninsured; D016134:Organizational Policy; D015143:Philadelphia; D017664:Uncompensated Care / Q000191:economics*; D014481:United States