Missouri hospitals’ charitable burden increased again in 2020, the News Tribune reports.
That’s probably not surprising, considering they spent most of the year dealing with challenges that came from a pandemic. And as the hospitals struggled to meet demands, unpaid bills mounted — by the millions.
Like their colleagues elsewhere in the state, local hospitals felt the squeeze.
SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital showed a loss of more than $33 million during the year. Capital Region Medical Center showed losses of $2.4 million.
As the state’s hospitals became the front-line fighters against the COVID-19 pandemic, the free services they offered increased by about $100 million over the previous year, according to the Missouri Hospital Association.
MHA released its annual Community Investment Report last week, and showed hospitals provided $3.5 billion in community benefit in 2020. The $3.5 billion figure also represents a 16 percent increase over the past decade.
During the first year of the panedmic, Missouri hospitals provided about $1.8 billion in uncompensated care (care for which hospitals were not paid) for patients. Read more.
