Mercy Provides Valuable Community Benefit
$25 Million in Uncompensated Care and Healthcare Services Given Last Year
Mercy Medical Center—Sioux City provides more than $25 million in community benefits to Siouxland, according to an assessment of those programs and services completed late last year. That amount, based on figures from the hospital’s last fiscal year, includes $21.7 million in uncompensated care and more than $3 million in free or discounted community benefits that Mercy specifically implemented to help residents of the area.
Community benefits are activities designed to improve health status and increase access to health care. Along with uncompensated care, community benefits include such services and programs as health screenings, support groups, counseling, immunizations, nutritional services, and transportation programs.
“Mercy reaches thousands of people in a variety of ways through its important community benefit ministry,” said Mari Kaptain-Dahlen, Mercy’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “According to our long-standing mission, we routinely reach out to populations at risk – those most in need and the underserved – as well as the broader community.”
“For populations at risk, service is tied to income status, usually the federal poverty levels or to the issues that primarily affect the poor.”
“Beyond traditional forms of ‘charity care,’ programs and activities for populations at risk take the form of services provided without reimbursement, the donation of time, resources and talent by many of Mercy’s employees and, on occasion, direct donations or grants to specific community programs,” Kaptain-Dahlen added.
Among the many Mercy-supported programs that benefited populations at risk were discounted laboratory testing and services, support for Meals-on-Wheels and local food pantries, Mercy’s Medicaid Assistance Program, transportation services for the disabled and support for agencies serving those in need like the Mary J. Treglia Community House, La Casa Latina, and the Council on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.
In addition to its support for those who are most in need, Mercy Medical Center’s community benefit ministry for the broader community contributed millions of dollars to programs, grants and activities that served the community at large during the past year. Support for the Mercy Child Advocacy Center, which provides leadership in a community-wide effort to combat child abuse, and important community screening and education programs, were a large part of that effort.
Mercy also supported free monthly educational programs to foster positive health practices in the broader community. Programs and activities in this category of support included babysitting and breastfeeding classes, diabetes and cholesterol screenings and first-aid and safety classes.
Mercy Medical Center also continues to support the Graduate Medical Education program, which gives medical residents the chance to complete their training and provides additional medical resources for Siouxland.
Information about Mercy’s community benefit is included in a new statewide report by the Iowa Hospital Association (IHA) that shows Iowa hospitals provided community benefits in 2005 valued at more than $789 million.
Losses from Medicare and Medicaid shortfalls also figure into the community benefits equation. Both of those government insurance programs fail to fully cover the cost of care provided by Mercy, which in its last fiscal year lost $15.8 million to Medicare and more than $2 million to Medicaid.
While Medicare and Medicaid combined represent about 60% of all hospital revenue in Iowa, providing services to the two programs’ beneficiaries creates approximately $219 million in losses for the state’s hospitals.
Hospital leaders said the ability of Mercy Medical Center—Sioux City and other Iowa hospitals to continue financing programs such as Meals on Wheels, support for other community agencies, or free health screenings is very much threatened by these losses.
“These kinds of programs are not likely to be supported or provided by any entity other than a community hospital,” said IHA president Kirk Norris. “Without Iowa’s 117 community hospitals offering this type of service, demand for tax-supported programs to provide the same services would be greater."
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