Tribune headline yesterday, "Why Cook hospitals are losing millions"---workers are not even asking people whether they have insurance, and just leaving this money on the table, even as Cook County is struggling with a huge deficit--half a billion dollars. And even if they do bill, paperwork is completed so poorly 39% of Medicaid bills are rejected. In one county clinic, 25% of the encounter forms doctors filled out were over a year old, in not a pile but a wall of boxes, and ineligible for reimbursement. And that stat is from 5 years ago.
Wouldn't it be better to just outsource at least the administrative operations? But of course, those patronage jobs would go by the wayside. Oh, apparently the county has hired 3 consultants and is planning to hire more. Sounds like a bandaid. Maybe they are more relatives of Todd.
Today Dennis Byrne in his column reminds us that Cook County is providing "free" health care for the collar counties as well.
And all of this has human costs.
Hemoragging dollars and providing poor care as well.
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