Glens Falls Hospital is applying for the Sole Community Hospital designation, a federal title that could solve the hospital’s ongoing financial problem. The designation is granted — or rejected — by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
With a lingering sinus infection she couldn’t shake, Kathleen Smith went to an urgent care center in Manchester before work. She paid $100 to see a doctor at Elliot Urgent Care at River’s Edge about a year and a half ago, but Smith got hit with another $100 bill in the mail. She thought it was a mistake, a double charge.
Sharon Kelly had always been healthy and never used her insurance plan much. That all changed in 2016, when a routine mammogram showed a lump in her left breast. Kelly, a self-employed psychologist in West Chester, was swept up in a whirlwind of medical appointments, tests, and surgeries that got rid of the disease, but left her with $15,000 in medical bills.
Patients who sought treatment at 18 Texas Health Resources hospitals over the summer may have had their medical bills sent to the wrong person, the health system announced this week. Texas Health described it as a “billing misconfiguration” affecting patients who visited its wholly owned hospitals and four joint ventures between July 19 and Sept. 4.
Several hospital systems are lobbying Medicare to stop basing certain payments on their sticker prices, also known as "chargemasters" — prices the Trump administration has required them to disclose publicly. The intrigue: Hospitals aren't advocating for lower Medicare payments. They want to reduce the prices they list publicly, while retaining the same Medicare revenues.
While thousands of cities and counties have banded together to sue opioid makers and distributors in a federal court, another group of plaintiffs has started to sue on their own: hospitals. Hundreds of hospitals have joined up in a handful of lawsuits in state courts, seeing the state-based suits as their best hope for winning meaningful settlement money.