Holy Cross hospital treats all patients who come through the front doors. Regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, emergency treatment is offered without question, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Medical care is not something that everyone plans for and emergency visits can leave uninsured patients with unexpected expenses. Holy Cross Hospital’s billing department works closely with uninsured and low-income patients to help them understand and handle these unexpected medical expenses and to help them identify financial assistance options. At the end of the year, there are often many medical bills that are left unpaid, and in turn become ‘bad debt’ for the hospital. This is a burden that nobody wants to handle during the holiday season so, working in partnership with a group of local churches, Holy Cross Hospital initiated a medical debt relief program.
The Medical Debt Relief Fund is supported by community donations and the funds raised are used to pay off bad debt that remains at the end of the year. This program is more beneficial than just a dollar-to-dollar payoff of bad debt, for every $100 donated to the Medical Debt Relief Fund, $3,333 of bad debt is written off. In December of 2021 Holy Cross Hospital received financial donations that covered over $2,100,000 of bad debt!
In 2021, Holy Cross was able to clear the debt for 3,490 patients.
A majority of the donations for this fund come from community members and local faith institutions. If you are interested in donating to the Medical Debt Relief fund for 2022 please reach out to BPatten@taoshospital.org
Thanks to our 2021 Bad Debt Relief donors we were able to write off over $2,100,000 worth of bad debt. The donors include:
- B’Nai Shalom Havurah
- El Pueblito United Methodist Church
- First Presbyterian Church of Taos
- Neem Karoli Baba Ashram
- St. James Episcopal Church
- Taos Seventh Day Adventist Church
- Taos United Community Church
- The Living Word Ministries
- The Living Word Ministries
- Unitarian Congregation of Taos
- Unity of Taos
- Judith Bronner
- Sally Dobbie
- Patricia Heinen & Catherine Boyle
- Ashley D. Pond
- Merdith A Vaughn
- Gerald or Joan Vogel