Wyoming Medical Center to Expand Charity Care Eligibility

Wyoming Medical Center is revamping its charity care policy to allow more patients to qualify for free medical care, according to a report this week in the Wyoming Star Tribune.

The change in policy apparently stems from the hospital’s effort to prove its not-for-profit status, a trend occurring across the country now that the Internal Revenue Service has implemented new reporting rules for not-for-profit hospitals (“Hospitals Expanding Charity Care Guidelines to Ensure Tax-Exempt Status,” March 11).

The hospital’s chief executive officer, Nancy Brandt, told the Star-Tribune that charity care accounts for only about 20 percent of the hospital’s annual $30 million in uncompensated care expense. Bad debt expense accounts for the remaining 80 percent. Industry wide, charity care and bad debt expense are split evenly, she said.

“We really want to go back and make sure that we’re treating all of our patients in the most fair and equitable way we can,” Brandt told the pap. “So for people who are truly needy, we wanted to have a policy that would allow them forgiveness of their debt related to their medical bills.”

Wyoming’s new policy will use a sliding scale and allow patients at 200 percent of the federal poverty level or less to apply for complete coverage of their medical bills. Patients with income up to 275 percent of the federal poverty level also can apply to have a percentage of their medical bills covered, the Star-Tribune reported.

To help identify patients eligible for charity care, the hospital will replace its five-page application that takes about an hour to complete with a new one-page application that takes about five minutes to complete, the report said. Additionally, questions that may appear to judge charity care applicants will be removed and only facts related specifically to patient tax forms, pay stubs, and information that can be verified by documentation will be used.