Bridgeport's United Hospital Center gets $27,400 windfall from state

Feb. 2—BRIDGEPORT — West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore returned almost $27,400 in unclaimed cash to WVU Medicine United Hospital Center in Bridgeport on Thursday.

Moore has been traveling around the state raising awareness of the large sum of unclaimed property his office holds in trust.

"We like to do this public presentation of unclaimed property, because a lot of people don't know that it exists," Moore said. "We have $400 million in unclaimed property. We have an online database now that anybody can search."

The money Moore returned to UHC was generated from the large volume of transactions the hospital performs on a daily basis. Jim Rutkowski, CFO of the hospital, said the money comes from patient payments that are generated but aren't cashed, or overpayments to insurance companies or private patients.

It could also be vendors who haven't cashed a payment from the hospital. If a payment isn't claimed, the originator can claim it back after a certain period of time.

The money will help with UHC's operation.

"Health care is challenging today," Rutkowski said. "Every facility is struggling to varying degrees. Payments from third parties, particularly the federal and state government are short of what it costs us to take care of patients. Anytime we can get found money that we didn't know was available, it all helps."

David Hess, president and CEO of UHC, said receiving the money was an incredible feeling and a blessing. The hospital takes care of a lot of needs within the community, such as caring for people with no health insurance, which means the hospital needs its own help to continue providing care to underserved individuals.

"We're growing into a regional referral center here," Hess said. "We have patients, traveling hours away to receive care at United Hospital Center and sometimes once they get here, they struggle to be able to get home or to go to a nursing home or somewhere.

"These funds can go toward a lot of needs. Cancer patients need resources, they need supplies."

Hess said the process for receiving the money didn't take long. That alludes to one of the main selling points Moore makes frequently on his educational tours. His office has made the process of claiming forgotten cash easy and fast.

Moore said the website his office has setup keeps a database of all the unclaimed cash in the state and who is the beneficiary of it. The website is wvunclaimedproperty.gov.

"We've returned some rather large sums to individuals, hundreds of thousands of dollars just to even singular individuals," Moore said. "So you never know what's out there."

Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com