Essay on "Charity Patients When Healthcare"

Essay 8 pages (2440 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Applicants are required to provide financial information, particularly of income and assets. The participating hospital or health facility makes an assessment according to thee patient's family size and income. A social worker conducts and interview and reviews the information provided. Emergency rooms were created by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law passed in 1986. It requires emergency rooms throughout the U.S. To treat everyone who walks in whether able to pay or not for the care and treatment. The patient should, however, obtain preventative and routine health care from free clinics or charity care staffed by participating doctors. Emergency rooms are only for emergency, such as injuries or illnesses of potentially life-threatening kind. What happens sometimes is that patients go to emergency rooms for non-urgent conditions, such as infections, minor cuts, sprains or dental problems. There were almost 120 million visits at emergency rooms in 2007 alone and more than 10% of these were for non-urgent conditions. This drives the cost of intended free care up. Patients with non-urgent conditions not only take up space in the system, which results in longer waits. They also raise overall healthcare costs, which would be less expensive if obtained elsewhere (Salamon).

Fewer Specialists Attend to Charity Patients (Galloway, 2006)

As the number of uninsured increase, local specialists willing to treat them become fewer and fewer (Galloway, 2006). These specialist fields are orthopedics, gastroenterology, mental health, dermatology and neurology. Practitioners will not allow patients to come in without an insurance card even if these patients are willing to pay the charges during the visit or through collection. These patients are in many cases the working poor who cannot afford insurance but are quite qualified for government-funded coverage or charity care in hospitals. Thus, the uninsured with allergies or who need a colonoscopy cannot be attended to. They must endure untreated ailments, preventable complication and less appropriate treatments from family physicians who must breach the limits of their scope of practice. The other misfortune is that these family physicians cannot do that so easily. They can only offer drugs without treating the real condition. If they go to a hospital, they are referred back to a specialist (Galloway).

Many of these charity or uninsured patients can secure free or reduced-cost primary care from community health clinics (Galloway, 2006). Then they are referred to specialty care in 3 out of 13 visits on the average. State laws prohibit emergency rooms from turning away patients in life-threatening conditions. Hospitals compensate by not completing treatment. Most of them say they can no longer afford to extend care to the uninsured. State subsidies for reimbursements for indigent care have been cut. Payments for government plans for the poor, like Medicaid, are far less than private rates. Private insurers are paying much more, leading doctors to abandon free care more and more.

Any doctors or clinics, which express willingness to care for the uninsured, are overwhelmed by the number of referrals. And as the cost of insurance increases, employers pay less or ask low-income employees to share the expense. And when doctors and health facilities agree to extend care to charity or uninsured, another problem develops. The patients, who are the working poor, are not always able to complete paperwork or even come to appointments. All these combine and produce the so-called "physician fear factors," which make them reluctant to accommodate the patients (Galloway).

Method

This study uses the descriptive-normative method of research in recording, describing, interpreting, analyzing and comparing relevant information from authoritative and updated sources.

Results and Summary

More than 43 million uninsured Americans have no access to adequate charity health care or pay much more than the insured. State laws have cut down subsidies to indigent care and hospitals and doctors are more and more unwilling to extend free care, particularly in specialty fields. Some cost-efficient solutions include substituting medications, referrals to patient assistant programs and increasing patient motivation to comply with physician instructions. They may also approach medical residents, emergency physicians, internists, free clinics, charity care and emergency rooms.

Recommendations and Research Limitation

These include congressional lobbying for legislations to increase subsidies for indigent health care in health care facilities and a universal healthcare. These should also be the subject of further research. This research is limited to the hospitals and doctors who provided, refused or commented on the adequacy of health care for charity or uninsured patients and cost-effective solutions to current inadequacy of such care in the select hospitals in the current decade. #

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Associated Press, The (2004). Uninsured patients pay more for care. MSNBC:

MSNBC.com. Retrieved on April 20, 2011 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5290172/health-health_care

Fletcher, A. (2005). More residents treating uninsured patients. Denver Business Journal:

American City Business Journals, Inc. Retrieved on April 20, 2011 from http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/storeis/2005/05/.../story5.html

Galloway, A. (2006). Uninsured have little hope of getting specialized care. Seattle Post-

Intelligencer Reporter: Hearst Communications, Inc. Retrieved on April 20, 2011

from http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Uninsured-have-little-hope-of-getting_specialized-119500.php

Lakeview (2011). Charity care patients' bill of rights. Lakeview Action Coalition:

Lakeview Medical Center. Retrieved on April 20, 2011 from http://www.lakeviewaction.org/.../Charity_Care_Patients_Bill_of_Rights.doc

Luthy, K.E., et al. (2008). Cost-efficient treatment options for uninsured or underinsured.

4 (8) Journal for Nurse Practitioners: Elsevier Science, Inc. Retrieved on April 20,

2011 from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/581260

Online News (2004). Emergency physicians treating more uninsured patients, survey finds. Vol 8 # 20 University of Washington School of Medicine. Retrieved on April

20, 2011 from http://depts.washington.edu/mednews/vol8/no20/acep.html

Pope, J. (2003). Most internists provide charity care to the uninsured. APC Online:

American College of Physicians. Retrieved on April 20, 2011 from http://www.acponline.org/pressroom/charity_care.htm

Salamon, M. (2009).… READ MORE

How to Reference "Charity Patients When Healthcare" Essay in a Bibliography

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