In this episode, Christina Brown, BESLER’s Director of Reimbursement Services, provides us with a glimpse into BESLER’s next webinar as part of our Fundamentals of Reimbursement Webinar Series, Evolution of Uncompensated Care, presented live Wednesday, October 30, at 1 PM ET.
Podcast (hfppodcast): Play in new window | Download
Learn how to listen to The Hospital Finance Podcast® on your mobile device.Highlights of this episode include:
- What is Uncompensated Care
- How this one differs from previous webinars
- Historical information pertaining to uncompensated care reimbursement
- The exhibits that are required for filing the cost report
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 Director of Reimbursement Services. In this episode, Christina will provide us with a glimpse into BESLER’s next webinar as part of our Fundamentals of Reimbursement Webinar Series, Evolution of Uncompensated Care, that we’re presenting live on Wednesday, October 30, at 1 PM Eastern Time. Welcome back and thank you for joining us, Christina
Christina Brown: Thanks so much, Kelly. It’s always a pleasure.
Kelly: Yes, it is. Well, let’s go ahead and jump in. So can you elaborate a little on what is meant by uncompensated care as it relates to the context of this webinar?
Christina: Sure, Kelly, that’s a great question. So uncompensated care, when we talk about reimbursement, it really pertains to care that is provided for which no payment is received or expected to be received from a patient or an insurer. More specifically, what I’m referring to is bad debt and charity care. So, on the webinar, I will go into depth on defining bad debt and charity care and touch on what should and should not be included in these areas. The interesting thing about uncompensated care is its evolution over the past about 5 to 10 years. Most notably is the relationship between uncompensated care and disproportionate share hospital payments. So, one of the things I’m going to be touching on during this webinar is this relationship between uncompensated care and disproportionate hospital payments.
Kelly: Sounds good. Sounds like it’s going to be an interesting webinar. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a few webinars from you and your team around the topic of uncompensated care. Tell us how this one differs and what you will be covering in this webinar.
Christina: Yes, Kelly, you’re absolutely right. So, we do touch on this topic in a variety of ways due to its complexity and importance in reimbursement. There really is so much to cover on this topic. So, we really want to ensure that we address this in a few different ways. This webinar will be more broad than the ones that we’ve done in the past. For example, we have done one specifically related to 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 to file the cost report. We’ve also done webinars where we went in-depth on Worksheet S-10, which is actually where uncompensated care is reported. But this webinar will be more broad in content and really less specific on the granular details of processing data for the cost report.
Kelly: Sounds fantastic. There’s going to be a lot to learn in this one. So, the title of this webinar alludes that you may cover more than just uncompensated care as it stands today. Will you touch on any historical information pertaining to uncompensated care reimbursement?
Christina: Yes, Kelly, that’s actually a great point and is also a correct assumption. As some or most that tune into this webinar may be aware, uncompensated care instructions and how it’s used has really evolved over recent years. And I’ll be discussing the historical attributes of uncompensated care and comparing to where its importance lies in today’s hospital reimbursement.
Kelly: Very cool. Looking forward to that. So do you think this would be a good webinar for someone new to reimbursement?
Christina: Absolutely. I do believe that this webinar would be great for those that are new to reimbursement or may not fully understand uncompensated care. It will provide general terms used when discussing uncompensated care, as well as an idea of how it has evolved over recent years. In addition to reimbursement professionals, I feel this would also be a great webinar for those that may not need to really know all the details of uncompensated care and what goes into preparing it for the cost report, but perhaps would like to have some basic knowledge on the topic.
Kelly: There really is so much to learn. So will you be spending any time going over any of the exhibits that are required for filing the cost report?
Christina: That’s another great question, Kelly. And if you know anything about uncompensated care and cost reporting, you probably already know and understand the importance of the exhibits. However, we have really already covered those exhibits pretty extensively in our previous webinars. The last one being just this past August on our reimbursement symposium, which if you did not get a chance to attend that, I really would encourage you to check out that recording on our website. But for purposes of this webinar, I will really only touch on the exhibits and really will not go into any detail on all the various data components and processing best practices. But if that’s really something that interests you, then I would encourage you to check out one of our previously recorded webinars on our website.
Kelly: We do have quite the collection on our website. You’re right. So yeah, anybody who’s interested in learning more can definitely check that out in our Insights section. Thank you so much for all this information, Christina, for joining us and giving this sneak peek into the upcoming BESLER webinar, Evolution of Uncompensated Care, that you are presenting live on Wednesday, October 30, at 1 PM Eastern Time. And as a bonus, you can earn CPE. Thanks again, Christina.
Christina: Thanks so much, Kelly. It’s always a pleasure.
Kelly: Yes, 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.
