It’s only been two months, but Greene County Medical Center has already seen a significant change in its bad debt and charity care cases.

Chief Financial Officer Mark VanderLinden says since the state government has increased its Medicaid coverage to 133% below the poverty level, the medical center increased its coverage to 150% and he adds that they can offer discounts up to 225%.  He explains that a family of four would get 100% coverage by the medical center if they made $31,322 at 133% and now that same family can have an income of $35,325 at 150% and be completely covered.

He points out that they did this so they can continue to help provide financial assistance to those who need it for health care.

Since the policy change took place in February, VanderLinden notes that their bad debt has dropped dramatically from $758,994 last year to $498,460 this year.  Comparatively, charity care has increased from $74,839 in 2013 to $222,612 so far this year.

In most cases, individuals have to sign up for charity care, but VanderLinden points out one aspect of the policy where the medical center can automatically register someone for coverage.

“The cool thing about the policy is that we have a presumptive feature in it.  So if an individual is already on another assistance plans or state offered plans and such, we can automatically go a head and write them off without requiring the application.”

He states one of their priorities this year was to do a better job of reporting true charity care cases and now that the policy has been changed VanderLinden feels they are in the right direction to keep declining the hospital’s bad debt while increasing the amount of charity care cases.

He highly encourages anyone who has questions or wants for information about signing up for charity care, to call the hospital at 386-2114.