The Nebraska Hospital Association (NHA) has released their 2022 Community Benefits Report, detailing a total of $1,541,029,605 of contributions made to the community.
At a press conference Wednesday, President of NHA Jeremy Nordquist talked about what exactly these benefits provide, “That ranges from providing free care to individuals who are unable to pay, offering community health education and outreach, offering free screenings and preventative services, providing scholarships and residencies for health professionals, and conducting health research. In addition to absorbing the unpaid costs of public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and incurring bad debt from individuals that couldn’t pay all of their bill.”
The largest portion of these benefits go to absorbing the financial losses from providing care in Medicaid and Medicare. Nordquist said, ” In our state, we’ve seen with the Medicaid program a dramatic increase for our hospitals in the the difference between the cost to provide Medicaid services and the amount being reimbursed. In 2019, Nebraska hospitals lost about $224,000,000 providing Medicaid services. In 2021, that number had increased over 60% to a loss of $362,000,000. So clearly, the cost to provide care is growing faster than payment for those services.”
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(Photo Courtesy: Nebraska Hospital Association)