PHOENIX (AP) — The federal government has reimbursed Arizona hospitals and doctors $92 million over the past two years to offset unpaid bills for emergency care provided to undocumented immigrants.
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To make up the shortfall, hospitals say they are forced to raise the costs of basic hospital services for everyone else.
“It becomes part of the bad debt of hospitals,” said Rich Polheber, chief executive officer of Carondelet Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales.
Carondelet operates one hospital in Nogales at the U.S.-Mexican border and three in the Tucson area. The Carondelet hospitals provided about $15.5 million worth of care to immigrant patients over the past two years, and the hospital network collected $2.4 million under the program, the company said.
That means less than 16 percent of the hospital group’s undocumented-immigrant-related bills were paid.
As a southern Arizona Level 1 trauma center, University Medical Center in Tucson handles the most critical accidents in the region.
The hospital typically absorbs $6 million each year in hospital costs and treats about 1,300 foreign-national patients that may or may not be in the United States legally, said Greg Pivirotto, University Medical Center’s chief executive officer.
Federal aid to hospitals dealing with an immigrant health care crunch could end next year.
The program was designed as a temporary fix for overburdened health care providers, and Arizona hospitals realize the financial aid may vanish at the end of fiscal 2008.
Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl pushed for the measure to help hospitals offset the costs with the idea that a comprehensive immigration-reform bill would take care of the problem.
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DrTim wrote on Oct 31, 2007 8:51 AM: