Reply #439: Hopkins DOES have Charity Care programs in place.

[davsand]

They talk about it on the website:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/healthcaredelivery.html

"The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Outpatient Center
Rated best hospital in the nation year after year for excellence in every specialty, this flagship of Hopkins Medicine includes such renowned centers as the Brady Urological Institute, the Wilmer Eye Institute, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and Heart Institute. Drawing patients from around the world, Hopkins Hospital also provides more charity care than any other hospital in Baltimore. Its nurses have achieved coveted Magnet Status. Located across from the hospital and connected to it by an underground concourse, the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center includes facilities for diagnostic testing and imaging and outpatient surgery."

If you are helping Andy with his billing call the patient accounts people and demand that they talk to you about the charity care program. A lot of hospitals work very hard to limit access to those programs, but they DO exist, and they can help a GREAT deal with the medical bills.

Pay attention to what they say about the program because there are a LOT of ways they try and discourage patients from seeking charity care. If they give you any shit at all ask them if their tax exemptions are tied in any way to provision of charity care. They BETTER take you seriously on this, because they have both a federal AND a state obligation to the medically indigent (not to mention a moral one.)

There have been class action lawsuits filed nationwide because of lack of provision of charity care for the uninsured.

PM me if you want more details. I have been fighting on this issue for about the last three years.


Laura