NC nonprofit hospitals are supposed to provide charity care, but bill poor patients
Some North Carolina hospitals are billing poor patients at three times the national average but face little accountability for doing so, an analysis released Wednesday by the North Carolina State Health Plan shows.
Nonprofit hospitals promise as part of their tax-exempt status to waive fees for poor patients — known as charity care — but they set their own standards for how much to waive.
“Without standards and accountability, it has become difficult to tell nonprofit hospitals apart from for-profits,” the report says.
The report comes as families are struggling even more during the pandemic to pay medical bills. in 2020, around one in five families had medical debt, according to the Urban Institute.
Eighteen nonprofit hospitals billed close to $150 million to poor patients whose health care costs should’ve been waived in 2019, according to the analysis, which was conducted alongside the National Academy for State Health Policy. That is likely an underestimate, however, as only 16% of hospitals in the state provided data, the report said.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell, backed by fellow Republicans as well as Democratsin North Carolina’s legislature, is calling for legislation that sets minimum requirements for how much charity care nonprofit hospitals must provide.
“The findings in this report show the need for greater accountability,” Folwell said in a news release Wednesday. “Despite lucrative tax breaks, nonprofit hospitals do not always provide more charity care than their for-profit counterparts.”
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