In the first year of the Affordable Care Act's implementation, U.S. hospital charity care dropped 13 percent and bad debt stabilized, according to an analysis published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Post-Gazette analyzed CMS data on more than 4,500 hospitals from 2011 to 2014 and found charity care fell to 1.59 percent of net patient revenue in 2014, the first year of the ACA, down from 1.81 percent in 2013, according to the report. It also found the implementation of the ACA coincided with a halt to bad debt growth for the first time in the four years studied.
The combined reduction in charity care and bad debt growth generated an average $1.2 million in savings per hospital, according to the Post-Gazette.
Read the full report here.
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