Phoebe Putney Health System makes adjustments to financial assistance policy

ALBANY — The Finance Committee for Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, and the hospital’s full Board of Directors, OK’d on Wednesday updates to Phoebe Putney Health System’s financial assistance policy.

The committee was presented with the updates after they had already been put before similar committees at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center and Phoebe Worth Medical Center.

Brian Church, the chief financial officer for the health system, said a policy has to be provided annually to the Georgia Department of Community Health — so it is beneficial anyway to take a look at it in the meantime for adjustments that may be needed.

“It is good to update it every year,” he said.

The revisions include a shift in the assistance sliding scale for income levels from 120-200 to 120-400 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, elimination of catastrophic status for income in excess of 400 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, an update in the amount generally billed — or AGB — to make sure patients with no means to pay are not hit with gross charges and get a discount consistent with what commercial insurance carriers and Medicaid receive.

The updates also reflect a recognition of the health care sharing ministry as a form of third-party coverage.

Church said many hospitals choose to recognize the AGB discount across the board at the time of billing, and that Phoebe began doing this in 2017 to provide discounts from full charges for uninsured, net down accounts receivable at billing and improve efficiency by reducing manual adjustments.

He said that, due to the current commercial contract structure, it is necessary to move to adjust the financial assistance policy and AGB to take into account managed-care contract partners.

A recommended modification Church presented is to eliminate the automated self-pay discount for all uninsured patients, based on AGB, but expand the qualifying levels for financial assistance from 200-400 percent of federal poverty guidelines.

He said this will result in the uninsured discount decreasing, the recognized charity increasing across the Phoebe Health System and the difference being reflected as an increase in bad debt that is not expected to have a net margin impact.

Overall, the financial assistance policy initially approved last year remains largely intact with the approved adjustments.

Church also said some changes are expected to Phoebe’s accounting practices, which are anticipated to come before the committee on July.

Jennifer Parks