Can Extremes Really Increase Hospital Bad Debt?

While the weather is getting hotter and hotter in summer, or colder and colder in winter, not all of us think how badly it can influence the debts we might have. That’s the point all of the hospital financial executives must take into consideration, what is proved by the detailed analysis of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

This report, which turns our attention to bad debt’s pecularities, is called “Hospital Stays Resulting from Excessive Heat and Cold Exposure Due to Weather Conditions in U.S. Community Hospitals, 2005,”. The document states that about 6,200 people were hospitalized in 2005 because of the weather getting too hot. Most of those people came in through the emergency department. On the whole, conditions brought on by bad weather cost about $120 million to treat in 2005, as the statistics show.

There is a special treatment organized for available heat exposure, it was counted that 81.6 percent were later on accepted for treatment at an average cost per stay of $6,200. On the opposite, hospitalizations for cold weather exposure totaled in 6,500 in the same 2005. Among that group, 77 % who came in through the ED were included in the hospital at an average cost of $12,500.

The uninsured rates of hospitals for poor associations are often high, saw two to two and half times more patients for such conditions than hospitals in prosperous communities. These obvious facts won’t surprise anyone, because poor people may lack the money to pay for heating and cooling at different weather conditions. As the result, such hospitals can be attacked by bad debt issues when these weather conditions exist. I’ll tell even more: with a trembling economy today, both uninsured rates and exposure due to lack of utilities are able to rise this year. We have just wait and see.

Can Extremes Really Increase Hospital Bad Debt?

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