Uncompensated and discounted Medicaid care provided by physician group practices in Wisconsin
N. C. Dunham, D. A. Kindig, S. Lastiri-Quiros, M. T. Barham and P. Ramsay
St. Marys Hospital Medical Center, Madison, WI 53715-0450.
A survey of a sample of physician group practices in Wisconsin was
undertaken to determine the amounts of charity care, bad debt, and
discounted Medicaid care that were provided in 1988. Overall, the physician
group practices in the sample reported dollar amounts of uncompensated care
and discounted Medicaid care that averaged approximately 7.6% of their
total billings for the year (1.6% of charity care, 3.0% of bad debt, and
3.0% of discounted Medicaid care). From the dollar totals reported, it was
calculated that the individual physicians represented by this sample of
group practices were responsible for, on average, +4300 of charity care,
+9100 of bad debt, and +7500 of Medicaid discounted services, for a yearly
per-physician total of +20,900 of uncompensated care and discounted care
provided to uninsured and indigent patients. The results indicate that a
majority of the group practices provided more charity care in 1988 than
they had 5 years earlier and suggest that the burden of providing
uncompensated care tends to fall disproportionately on those group
practices that are also providing relatively high levels of service to
Medicaid recipients.
