Hospitals help uninsured patients

KUSA - Hospital bills can be extremely expensive, especially if a patient doesn't have insurance, but hospitals throughout Colorado are willing to work with patients to make bills affordable.

Denver Health will cut any uninsured patient's bill by 50 percent, as long as that patient agrees to sit down with a billing expert who will search for any possible state or federal funding sources to pay those bills.

The hospital also offers low priced deductibles for patients depending on their income level.

"The mission of Denver Health is to serve all patients in the City and County of Denver regardless of their ability to pay," said Peg Burnette, CFO of Denver Health. "That's our primary mission."

That mission cost the hospital $318 million in 2008 through uncompensated care.

Private hospitals also provide steep discounts for uninsured patients. Exempla provides almost 22 million dollars of charity care at its facilities, and Centura, which runs the largest number of facilities in Colorado, provided more than $150 million of charity care last year.

"The first thing we try to do is support [uninsured patients] in finding sources of funding. So, that would be Medicaid and the Colorado Indigent Care Program," Tracy Berry, a senior vice president at Centura Health, said.

Centura also offers uninsured patients a 30 percent discount on their total bill, and a 15 percent prompt-pay discount.

All hospitals are willing to set up payment plans for those medical bills.

Berry says the best thing for patients to do is to talk to billing experts about exactly what their needs are.

"Qualification to these different, various programs really is based typically on your family size and your financial situation, and that's unique to each patient," Berry said.