Byline: Marsha Austin
Dec. 16--Colorado's largest hospital system has backed out of a plan to discount services to the uninsured, patient advocates said Monday.
Last spring, Centura Health told two nonprofits that it would offer uninsured patients the same discounts health plans get, which would result in potentially thousands of dollars in savings for individuals.
But after months of negotiations with Los Angeles-based civil rights group Consejo de Latinos Unidos and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Centura has decided not to commit to the price breaks.
'We recognize the problem, but we want to address it in a thoughtful way,' said Pam Nicholson, Centura vice president of advocacy.
Giving the uninsured discounts may violate several federal laws, including one that bars hospitals from using financial incentives to draw customers and another that prohibits them from charging different prices for the same care, Centura's attorney Chris Ordelheide said.
K.B. Forbes, Consejo's executive director, called the hospital's decision 'blatantly wrong for the No. 1 hospital chain in Colorado, one that calls itself faith-based, to say, 'We are going to continue our discriminatory practices of price gouging,' ' Forbes said.
All Centura had to do to alleviate legal concerns was follow in the footsteps of hospital giant Tenet Healthcare Corp. and say its pact with the uninsured would be enacted pending government approval, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative advocate Lorez Meinhold said.
Patient advocates simply want Centura to commit to charging uninsured patients 'a fair and reasonable rate,' she said.
Centura is considering changes to its bill-collecting practices, including eliminating tactics like putting liens on patients' homes and suing patients who are unemployed or unable to pay.
Centura also is developing a plan to provide financial assistance to patients with income of no more than 400 percent of the poverty line, or about $73,600 for a family of four. At this level, more than 80 percent of the uninsured would qualify, Nicholson said.
Hospitals, including Centura, typically charge uninsured patients who don't qualify for charity care full price for treatment, which can be up to five times the rate hospitals are reimbursed for insured patients, a Denver Post investigation of court records found in January.
Forbes says Centura's proposed policy changes don't go far enough toward easing the financial burden of the uninsured.
Centura approached Forbes in February, after he teamed up with the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative to run a series of radio advertisements, recruiting patients who had been harassed by hospital bill collectors and those who thought they had been overcharged.
'They said, 'We are going to correct this,' ' he said.
Forbes is running a national campaign to eradicate aggressive collection practices and negotiate what he says are fairer prices for uninsured patients.
Around the time Forbes began working with Centura, Consejo secured an agreement with Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Tenet, in which the 101-hospital chain agreed to discount uninsured patients' bills and to not place liens on homes or to sue patients for unpaid bills.
Tenet has since implemented the new bill-collection practices and is waiting for federal approval of its price discounts, Tenet spokesman Steve Campanini said.
Forbes gave Centura executives a copy of the Tenet compact, and they developed a similar policy that incorporated the faith-based values of the joint Catholic-Adventist venture.
Forbes and Meinhold reviewed the document in June, and in October, the groups were planning the announcement of the new policy. But then the hospital system abruptly pulled back, he said.
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(c) 2003, The Denver Post. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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