Mount Sinai Hospital

Programs: The mount sinai hospital provides quality medical healthcare regardless of race, creed, sex, national origin, handicap, age, or ability to pay. Although reimbursement for services rendered is critical to the operation and stability of the mount sinai hospital, it is recognized that not all individuals possess the ability to purchase essential medical services and healthcare education. As a matter of policy, the hospital provides significant amounts of partially or totally uncompensated patient care. For accounting purposes, such uncompensated care is treated either as charity care or bad debt expense. The hospital's charity care policy ensures the provision of quality health care to the community served while carefully considering the ability of the patient to pay. The policy has sliding fee schedules for inpatient, ambulatory and emergency services provided to the uninsured and under-insured patients who qualify. Patients are eligible for the charity care fee schedule if they meet certain income tests. Furthermore, as part of its charity care and financial aid policy, the hospital obtains and uses additional financial information for uninsured or under-insured patients who have not supplied the requisite information to qualify for charity care. The additional information obtained is used by the hospital to determine whether to qualify patients for charity care and/or financial aid in accordance with the hospital's policies. For accounting and disclosure purposes, charity care is considered to be the difference between the hospital's customary charges and the sliding charity care fee schedule rates. Since payment of this difference is not sought, charity care allowances are not reported as revenue. The hospital's estimated costs for charity care were $39. 6 million for 2016 and $38. 2 million for 2015. The cost of charity includes the direct and indirect cost of providing charity care services. The cost is estimated by utilizing a ratio of cost to gross charges applied to the gross uncompensated charges associated with providing charity care. Funds received from the new york state indigent care pool to offset charity services provided totaled approximately $8. 6 million and $13. 0 million for the years ended december 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively. The charity care component of the indigent care pool payments is estimated utilizing a ratio of charity care charges to total charity care and bad debt charges applied to the indigent care pool reimbursement and excludes amounts designated for teaching programs. Additionally, patients who do not qualify for sliding scale fees and all uninsured inpatients who do not qualify for medicaid assistance are billed at the hospital's rates. Uncollected balances for these patients are categorized as bad debts. Total uncompensated care as a result of bad debts for all patient services approximated $16. 1 million in 2016 and $14. 7 million in 2015. The mount sinai hospital is the primary health care provider for the east harlem area of new york city. East harlem is one of the poorest communities in the new york city region, and has been designated as a medically underserved area. A wide variety of programs and services are currently provided for the community which include: -primary care -aids -cardiovascular health -cancer treatment -maternal and infant health -geriatrics -ambulatory sensitive conditions (asthma and diabetes) -adolescent health -youth education -volunteer services