Texas Hospitals Have More Than $8 Billion In Uncompensated Care Costs

Texas hospitals participating in the state’s Medicaid program in 2015 had estimated uncompensated care costs of more than $8 billion due to charity care for low-income uninsured individuals and bad debt. In 2015, the hospitals received payments of about $4.7 billion from the Uncompensated Care (UC) Pool and Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funds, which reduced their unreimbursed care costs to about $4.0 billion.

These findings were reported in “Evaluation of Uncompensated Care and Medicaid Payments in Texas Hospitals and the Role of Texas’ Uncompensated Care Pool,” by researchers with Health Management Associates. The report was compiled . . .