Long-staying patients hurt Jackson’s finances.

Patients staying more than 30 days at Jackson Memorial Hospital are a major source of losses of the cash-poor system.

By John Dorschner
jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com
At the end of March, 60 patients had been in Jackson Memorial Hospital for more than 100 days. One had been there 528 days.

Most are no longer covered by insurance. They have complex medical problems and are a crushing burden for Miami-Dade’s cash-poor public hospital. Many had insurance, but their benefits ran out or didn’t come close to paying the cost of their care. Almost all could be sent to a long-term care facility, but none wanted to take them. Five of the patients were from overseas.

They symbolize a fundamental financial problem at the Jackson Health System: patients who are hospitalized for long periods of time without insurance coverage. The average patient stays in a Jackson hospital room for 6.7 days. That’s far ahead of the 4.1 days of a typical community hospital like Kendall Regional Medical Center, owned by the HCA chain, according to state data. It’s also well above the major Broward public hospitals — Broward General at 5.6 days and Memorial Regional at 5.4 days.

As Jackson struggles to survive, with more than $330 million in losses the past two years and an expected loss of $103 million this fiscal year, length of stay is becoming a major focus for improvement.

Marcos Lapciuc, treasurer of Jackson’s governing board, calls the disparities “toxic,â€