August 7, 2014—Public hospitals and health systems – nearly all of which participate in the 340B program – provided more than $7.7 billion in uncompensated care in 2012, new data from the group America’s Essential Hospitals show. The figure is about $1.7 billion greater than total amount spent on all drugs through the 340B program in 2012 by all types of health care providers.[ms-protect-content id=”2799″]
“The nation’s essential hospitals met their core commitment to vulnerable patients in 2012 and also supplied disproportionate levels of vital community services, including trauma, burn, and psychiatric care, and physician training—all while typically operating at a loss,” the group said on Aug. 4 upon releasing its annual survey of member characteristics.
According to the report, the hospital group’s members had an average operating loss of 0.4 percent in 2012, compared with an average 6.5 percent margin for all hospitals nationwide. “Without Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments, a key source of federal support, aggregate member operating margins would have dropped to an 8 percent loss,” the group said.
On the same day as the report’s release, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued its hospital inpatient prospective payments system final rule for fiscal year 2015. The rule cuts Medicare DSH payments by 1.3 percent compared with current spending. The proposed rule called for a 1.1 percent reduction. Congress delayed corresponding Medicaid DSH cuts under the Affordable Care Act until fiscal 2016.
Other key findings from the America’s Essential Hospitals report include:
- Member hospitals delivered nearly 204,000 babies in 2012, with Medicaid paying for 71 percent of those deliveries
- Essential hospitals provided non-emergency outpatient care to 41 million patients, averaging 494,054 non-emergency outpatient visits per hospital
- Essential hospitals treated more than 7.2 million patients in their emergency departments, averaging 87,047 visits per hospital
- Inpatient admissions averaged nearly 22,000 per hospital, roughly three times the inpatient volume of other acute-care hospitals nationwide.[/ms-protect-content]