week1

Response 1

Healthcare activities still face substantial issues related to uncompensated care (UC). Numerous healthcare facilities, including Emory University Hospital-Midtown, feel UC's significant effects. Its address is in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. This establishment provides tertiary care. Consequently, it serves a diverse patient group by providing highly specialized medical care. As a safety-net hospital serving a large number of low-income and uninsured patients, the problem of UC is still a significant concern. A component of Emory Healthcare is Emory University Hospital-Midtown. It runs several healthcare facilities in and around Atlanta as part of a bigger non-profit. The devastating effects of UC will still befall it regardless of that. The denial of Medicaid expansion in Georgia is one of the main reasons the institution attracts customers without health insurance. Although there are a lot of individuals in the area, most of them lead humble lives. Sullivan et al. (2021) found that most people cannot afford health insurance or Medicaid. Health services are, therefore, out of reach for most patients. This is a significant problem since it makes getting enough money for the treatment it gives much more difficult. 

            Additionally, UC is more severe for hospitals due to the high cost of specialized care services. This medical center offers cutting-edge services as a tertiary care facility. Offering these services, though, might be pretty pricey. Consequently, the expense of delivering this kind of care is sometimes not covered by insurance payments. The hospital will end up paying for services out of pocket. Despite the ACA's good intentions, experts are worried that it won't be able to solve the problem of UC at this facility. Improved access to healthcare and less strain on safety-net hospitals were two goals of the Affordable Care Act (Sullivan et al., 2021). Midtown Emory University Hospital is just like any other hospital. However, the ACA hasn't affected the hospital's budget much because Georgia hasn't expanded Medicaid. According to NewsCAP (2016), not even the Affordable Care Act can step in to fix Medicaid. Uncompensated care costs have persisted at Emory University Hospital–Midtown even after the Affordable Care Act.

 

 

Response 2

Uncompensated care mainly involves people without health insurance using less care than the insured people, and they cannot pay for the services when they access the care, leading to the incurred costs by the hospitals being uncompensated (Coughlin et al., 2021). In the United States, rural hospitals record the highest rate of uncompensated care than urban hospitals, mainly because of the challenges with expanding health insurance coverage (Keesee et al., 2023). The selected hospital is ECU Health North Hospital in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The rural hospital is one of the challenged facilities in North Carolina and nationally facing the challenges of uncompensated care. It has contributed significantly to the poor reviews by the patients, mainly because of the reduced resource availability and the needed capacity to provide high-quality services. Rural healthcare facilities are facing the uncompensated care problem mainly because of the reimbursement policy changes affecting Medicare-related payments (Camilleri & Diebold, 2019). Hence, most rural healthcare facilities lose revenue annually because the government must address the uncompensated care problem.

The Affordable Care Act was developed to improve the affordability and accessibility of healthcare services for millions of Americans, and the recent changes to the ACA system have contributed significantly to the increase in the concerns for experts because of the failure to address the uncompensated care problem (Ercia, 2021). Experts worry that the ACA's recent policies significantly affect the Federally Qualified Health Centers in rural and urban areas because of the higher rates of uncompensated care and increasing income losses for most facilities. Experts believe that more than the policy is needed to mitigate the uncompensated care problem effectively; more effective legislative approaches should be adopted to address the problem. Hence, concerns are high over the inability of rural hospitals to meet the health and wellness needs of uninsured and underinsured patients.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Camilleri, S., & Diebold, J. (2019). Hospital uncompensated care and patient experience: An instrumental variable approach.  Health Services Research,  54(3), 603–612.  https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.13111

Coughlin, T. A., Samuel-Jakubos, H., & Garfield, R. (2021, April 6).  Sources of Payment for Uncompensated Care for the Uninsured. KFF.  https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/sources-of-payment-for-uncompensated-care-for-the-uninsured/#

Ercia, A. (2021). The impact of the Affordable Care Act on patient coverage and access to care: Perspectives from FQHC administrators in Arizona, California and Texas.  BioMed Central (BMC) Health Services Research,  21(1), 1–9.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06961-9

Keesee, E., Gurzenda, S., Thompson, K., & Pink, G. H. (2023). Uncompensated Care is Highest for Rural Hospitals, Particularly in Non-Expansion States.  Medical Care Research and Review: MCRR,  81(2), 10775587231211366.  https://doi.org/10.1177/10775587231211366