http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1144563646/4

Published: Sunday April 09, 2006

Parkview Medical Center CEO C.W. Smith estimates that medical services for illegal immigrants run the hospital approximately $500,000 a year.

The shadow of immigrants lives on
Local hospitals don't track illegal immigrants needing care
Eighth in a series
By JAMES AMOS
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
It's difficult to say how many illegal immigrants have been treated at local hospitals or how much those services have cost.

Officials at Pueblo's public hospitals acknowledge that illegal immigrants who can't pay their medical bills do affect local hospitals, but not significantly.

Michelle Peulen at Parkview Medical Center said hospitals don't ask patients about their residency status when they seek emergency medical treatment.

"We don't have any specific way of tracking if a patient is an illegal immigrant," Peulen said.

"Part of the reason is that we don't turn away anybody based on their race, sex, religion or ability to pay," she said.

In 2004, Parkview supplied $24 million in unpaid care, Peulen said.

Parkview's chief executive officer, C.W. Smith, said unpaid medical care for illegal immigrants costs the hospital "probably about a half a million dollars" a year.

"I don't think there's a big expansion" each year, Smith said.

Parkview doesn't have a large number of cases involving illegalpatients, Smith said.

Whenever the hospital does have such a case, though, they often are high-cost instances such as auto accidents, neurosurgery and heart attacks.

Smith said the problem of uncompensated care for illegal immigrants is pronounced for outlying hospitals such as those in Pueblo. In Denver, cases involving illegal immigrants who can't pay would end up at the Denver Health hospital.

In Pueblo, "we're the Denver Health," he said of Parkview.

St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center CEO Tom Anderson said treating illegal patients has had only a small effect on his hospital's finances.

"They only constitute a minor impact on the total hospital population," Anderson said.

Like Parkview, St. Mary-Corwin doesn't track the citizenship status of patients.

And, Anderson added, "because we're faith-based, we don't turn anybody away."

Anderson said the total uncompensated care cost for St. Mary-Corwin is approximately $35 million a year, but added that illegal immigrants don't account for much of that expense.

"The real problem here in Southern Colorado is the number of people who work for small businesses with no insurance, or with insurance with huge co-pays," he said.

Pueblo Community Health Centers spokeswoman Janet Fieldman said the local clinic, which treats low-income patients, doesn't ask patients their citizenship status either.

Fieldman said she doesn't think illegal workers are draining public tax dollars, because immigrants don't qualify for the state and federal programs that pay for services such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Colorado Indigent Care Program.
"And, those programs make up about 97 percent of our patients," Fieldman said.

Patients who don't qualify for a program must pay their own fees, though they may be billed on a sliding scale according to income, she said.

"We won't ever turn anybody away because of their ability to pay," she said.

A spokeswoman for a statewide hospital association confirmed that hospitals across Colorado don't track the immigration status of their patients.

"There was concern that patients wouldn't come in if they had to answer a whole lot of questions about who they are," said Marty Arizumi of the Colorado Health and Hospital Association.

That could have a disastrous effect if a person has a contagious disease, Arizumi said.

"You don't want to be putting your community at risk if someone has (tuberculosis)," she said.

There is no statewide data showing how much care hospitals provide to illegal immigrants, Arizumi said.

Hospitals are eligible to be compensated by the federal government for some of the money they are owed by people who don't or can't pay their bills.

Arizumi said a 2003 law made hospitals eligible for the limited federal money.

Colorado's share of the money was $3.4 million for 2005, according to Arizumi. The state ranked 11th nationwide for the program.

The top four states seeking money for unpaid hospital costs were California with $70 million, Arizona, Texas and New York.

Overall, Arizumi said Colorado hospitals had $1.2 billion in unpaid care costs in 2003, though it was impossible to say how much of that care was for illegal immigrants.

No statistics were available for 2004 or 2005, though Arizumi said the 2004 charity care figure expected to climb about 30 percent.