Last week, the non-profit Providence St. Joseph Health and the Obligated Group spent some of its billions of dollars in cash and investments to erect orange plastic fencing around Kadlec Regional Medical Center in the Tri-Cities after a strike by technical and service workers began.
In their 2023 annual report, Providence reported that their $8.4 billion in cash and investments was down from previous years.
Kadlec became a nonreligious affiliate of Providence, a large Catholic health network in the Pacific Northwest, in 2014.
According to the workers’ union, SEIU Healthcare1199NW, employees doing the same job at Providence hospitals in Seattle make more than the workers at Kadlec while executives at Kadlec make the same salaries as executives in Seattle.
The Observer reached out to Kadlec and SEIU to ask about the fence and the strike but neither one of them responded.
In a February settlement with the state of Washington , Providence paid $157.8 million to provide refunds to 99,446 charity patients that were incorrectly billed for services. State law requires hospitals to provide charity care to patients based on their income. According to the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Providence aggressively sought payments from patients without giving them information about their right to charity care.
“As expressions of God’s healing love, witnessed through the ministry of Jesus, we are steadfast in serving all, especially those who are poor and vulnerable,” Providence gives as its mission.
When you go to ER, the doctor, tests and hospital are all billed separately, because the hospital has contracts with companies to provide those services. So when you get your $1,000+ bill from the hospital, and qualify of charity care, you’ll get $1,000+ bills from doctor and testing at the same time which aren’t covered under hospital charity care. So, if you don’t make enough or have enough in savings to cover paying hospital, doctor and testing; you’ll get sent to collections.
Hi Renee, I appreciate the clarification on the billing. Thank you for reading the Observer. Randy
So should the doctor and the lab staff provide their service to you for free or at a loss to keep you out of collections? What % do you think is “fair” for them to lose taking care of you?
Because you went to the ER and needed care, and you recieved the expensive care, who should bear that cost? Should I bear the cost, to keep you out of collections? What do you think my family should go without this month, so that i can pay a little more at the hospital to cover your cost and keep you out of collections? Or maybe i should just take a few extra shifts to cover it, so you dont have to pay?
If the hospital reduces your bill as charity care, and then passes your expense on to other paying patients (so they can pay their staff and keep the lights on,) will you defend the hospital when they have to charge everyone else $10 for a band aid? Or will you complain that there must be some smoky backroom somewhere full of old guys getting rich by running a hospial with $10 band aids?
Spoiler alert – there is no smoky back room, and no one is getting rich running a hospital. If they were, there wouldn’t be high-quality, old, well-run hospitals permanantely closing all over the country including in our area (Yakima, Walla Walla.)
Hi Patrick, Well that’s a lot to unpack. Almost everyone would agree that our healthcare system is broken. Hospital consolidation has contributed to the problem by creating monopolies and higher prices and lower wages at the same time. The conglomerates are making money. Since Apollo Global Management purchased Healthpoint that had purchased Trios and Lourdes, Global’s stock price has gone from about $50 a share to $144 a share. Meanwhile the “non-profit” Providence is sitting on a $9 billion investment fund. Charity patients are a convenient target but the number of them is low since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Thank you for reading the Observer. Randy
I’ve got no problem with a provider like Providence having a large amount of money in reserves. They operate in an incredibly expensive industry, and cash reserves will keep them afloat during periods of instability and during unique circumstances such as Covid. To look at Providence as an evil empire simply because they have money is shortsighted.
Hi Kevin, I appreciate your comments. The existence of these huge investment funds for “rainy days” by the large, non-profit hospital systems came under scrutiny during COVID when Providence received $1 billion in federal government funding. Data from the hospitals show that the Affordable Care Act has greatly reduced the number of uninsured patients. Thank you for reading the Observer. Randy
I am very familiar with the hypocrisy of Kadlec Medical Center, I am sorry to say, as I grew up in Richland and my family was a frequent visitor. However, the hospital changed and it is hard to find in their actions of the last twenty years adherence to the mission statement, whether it was the Planetree philosophy of the previous incarnation or the current mission statement. I had such high hopes when Providence bought the hospital, but, sadly, the attitude and values became worse–not those of the staff, but of the administration. Kerry Compton
Hi Kerry, I appreciate your comment. The growth of these huge, “non-profit” medical conglomerates is concerning for sure. Thank you for reading the Observer. Randy
I thought the fence was a bit of an overkill—definitely made the situation more adversarial.
For many years now, Kadlec has struggled to function according to mission statement/philosophy. There has been a huge gap between what they say and how they treat patients and families. This is from personal experience with them.
Hi Teresa, I appreciate your comment. The orange fence came down right after the 7-day strike ended. I wonder what it cost the hospital to put it up there and take it down and what they did with it. I don’t know if these huge “non-profit” hospital systems benefit anyone but the people at the top. The other two hospitals in the Tri-Cities, Lourdes and Trios, are for profit hospitals owned by Apollo Global Management which has seen its stock price go up about 33% in the last year. Health care in America is in a “smell of a hess” as my dear mother liked to say. Thanks for reading the Observer. Randy