Uncompensated Care Series – Overview Webinar

← Back to All Podcasts

Highlights of this episode include:

• What the webinar is about
• Target audience for this webinar
• Topics that will be covered
• Disproportionate share adjustment
• Supplemental payments

Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast.  We’re pleased to welcome back Christina Brown, BESLER’s Vice President of Reimbursement Services. In this episode, Christina will provide us with a glimpse into BESLER’s next free Webinar, Uncompensated Care Series – Overview, that we’re hosting live on Wednesday, January 21, at 1 PM Eastern Time. Welcome back and thanks for joining us, Christina.

Christina Brown: Thanks so much, Kelly. It’s always a pleasure.

Kelly: Yes, it is. So, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, we’ve seen a number of webinars on this topic. Can you give us a little bit of insight as to what this webinar is all about?

Christina: Sure thing. Yeah, that’s a true statement. So uncompensated care is a pretty hot topic when it comes to reimbursement. It makes sense that there’s a ton of interest and coverage on this particular topic. And we do like to discuss this one regularly as there are new people that enter the reimbursement profession. And that’s just really due to leading industry experts that are exiting the workforce. I think a lot of areas are saying that. It’s also imperative to cover this topic as this area has really evolved over recent years. But basically, uncompensated care is defined by CMS as care that is provided for which no payment is received or expected to be received from a patient or insurer. Specifically, what I’m referring to is really bad debt and charity care. However, uncompensated care also relates to another area worth mentioning, and that is the effect that it has on Disproportionate Share Hospital payments as the DSH hospitals have a high volume of Medicaid patients in proportion to total payer volume.

And if you’re aware, that’s really because Medicaid has a lower reimbursement rate than other payers do. So now I’m going to cover this relationship for those who may not understand that connection. And while I will touch on the basics of uncompensated care, things like where it’s reported on the cost report and how the payments work, I will save the deep dive into processing specifics for other webinars in the series.

Kelly: Right. Yeah. I know this is always a very popular topic. So, who do you feel would be the target audience of this webinar?

Christina: Yeah. And that’s a great question, and I’m happy to address that. So, I believe this webinar would be great for those that are new to reimbursement or may not fully understand uncompensated care. I’m going to provide some general terms used when discussing uncompensated care as well as some basic need-to-know items to understand its impact. And in addition to reimbursement professionals, I also feel this would also be a good webinar for those that may not need to know all of the details of uncompensated care and goes into preparing it for the cost report, but perhaps would like to have some basic knowledge on the topic.

Kelly: Awesome. Yeah. I know there’s a lot of people who would benefit from this. And we’ve discussed that we’ve done a few webinars on this topic, you and the team around the topic of uncompensated care. Can you go into a little bit more detail as to some of the topics that you’re going to be covering?

Christina: Yeah. And you’re absolutely right again. So, we do touch on this topic in a variety of ways due to its complexity, importance, and reimbursement. So, there is really so much to cover on this topic. So, we really want to ensure that we address this often in order to cover any updates as well as present it in a multitude of ways in hopes that information will connect with our attendees. That being said, for the basis of this webinar, it will be more broad than the ones that we’ve done in the past. So, for example, we have done specifically ones related disproportionate share, where we talked about how it’s related to uncompensated care. Then we went more in depth on how hospitals qualify for DSH and how to process the data needed for the cost report. We’ve also done webinars where we went in depth on Worksheet S-10, which is where the uncompensated care is reported. This webinar, as I mentioned, is going to be more broad in content and really less specific on the granular details of processing the data for the cost report.

However, no need to worry. We will get into those specifics with other ones in the series as we want to ensure we cover any new developments since our last webinars on this topic as we have seen some evolution in the S-10 audits as well as some legislative updates impacting DSH.

Kelly: I mean, things are definitely always changing, that’s for sure. You mentioned the disproportionate share adjustment. Will you be going into any detail around those payments and how to process the data?

Christina: Yeah. So unfortunately, I would need a lot more than the allotted hour to cover the basics as well as all the processing data elements necessary to file the cost report. So, for this one, I’m really just, as I said, touch on the basics of the Disproportionate Share Hospital adjustment and its relationship to uncompensated care, and how what’s filed on the cost report for uncompensated care on Worksheet S-10 impacts payments for hospitals that are eligible for that Disproportionate Share Hospital adjustment payment.

Kelly: Great. Looking forward to that. So, since you’re going to be talking about uncompensated care and how it relates to the supplemental payments, will you also be spending time talking about Worksheet S-10?

Christina: Sure. So yeah, that’s another great question, Kelly. So, if you know anything about uncompensated care and cost reporting, you probably already know and understand the importance of the exhibits that must be filed with the Medicare cost report. However, as with DSH, there’s simply not enough time in the allotted hour or with this webinar to go into all of the processing and data elements for the exhibits. So that’s really why we made this a series. So later, we do plan to do a deeper dive into Worksheet S-10 as well as the Disproportionate Share Hospital or DSH. And for purposes of this webinar, I am really going to only touch on the exhibits, and we’ll not go into any detail on all the various data components and how to process it and all those things. But I do encourage you to stay tuned for our other webinars in this series that will provide that level of detail. But that’s not to say to skip on this one, as you will obtain not only the CPE credit early in the year, but perhaps hopefully gain some additional insight on uncompensated care.

Kelly: Yeah. It’s sure to be a great webinar as well as the future ones we’re going to have this year. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Christina, and for giving us this sneak peek into BESLER’s upcoming webinar, Uncompensated Care Series – Overview, that you’re presenting live on Wednesday, January 21, at 1 PM Eastern Time. And as a bonus, you can earn CPE. Thanks again, Christina.

Christina: Thank you so much, Kelly.

Kelly: And thank you all for joining us for this episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…

[music] This concludes today’s episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. For show notes and additional resources to help you protect and enhance revenue at your hospital, visit besler.com/podcasts. The Hospital Finance Podcast is a production of BESLER | SMART ABOUT REVENUE, TENACIOUS ABOUT RESULTS.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to discuss on The Hospital Finance Podcast or if you’d like to be a guest, drop us a line at update@besler.com.

---

---