UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital provided 12.7 million in uncompensated care for fiscal year 2022, said Kelly Tracer, spokesperson for UCHealth.
“That’s the service that the health system provides, that’s not paid for — most often that’s patients who are uninsured and couldn’t pay for the care,” Tracer said.
Fiscal year 2022 ran from July 1, 2021, through June 30 of this year, and during that time, UCHealth provided $388 million in uncompensated care throughout the Rocky Mountain region, Tracer said.
Longs Peak Hospital also provided community benefits worth more than $17 million, said Lonnie Cramer, president of Longs Peak Hospital and Broomfield Hospital.
“It means a lot of different things — there’s a lot of people who can’t afford health care today,” he said. “We have a foundation where we have patient assistance funds for our area patients’ greatest needs.”
Those community benefits include many partnerships with local organizations — such as women’s groups and Meals on Wheels — and educational programs, Cramer explained.
“We’re educating people on what their services could be — decreasing diabetes, increasing their health living, screening exams,” he said. “It’s helping our community be stronger.”
The hospital has also launched other initiatives, such as extended hours for teachers, so they can access the imaging center for screening.
“We learned through St. Vrain Valley School District that teachers don’t have time to do it during the day — they can’t leave class — so we launched things in the afternoon to allow them to get there, so we can prevent bad outcomes or finding diagnoses later in life,” Cramer said.
The UCHealth network recently received an ‘A’ rating for social responsibility in the Lown Institute Hospitals Index, which measures “commitment to equity, inclusion and community health,” the report reads.
“All studies have shown the more diverse we are as a workforce, the better all of our outcomes are going to be,” Cramer said. “Our communities are diverse and therefore our workforce and our treatments should be diverse.”
Elizabeth Concordia, UCHealth president and CEO, said the nonprofit health care system faces rising inflation and decreasing operating margins, yet continues to expand its research and training programs. The Longs Peak Hospital will continue to do all it can to keep its most beneficial programs, Cramer said.
“We are going to be required to tighten our belts in other areas, but we will find ways to continue to offer the services as we move forward,” he explained. “It’s really engrained in our mission, as we look to improve lives, you can’t just say ‘we’re going to improve the insured lives,’ or ‘we’re going to improve the well-funded lives.’”
As Colorado’s largest provider of Medicaid services, the network has served more than 975,000 Medicaid patients so far this year, UCHealth said in a news release.
