Company: THC
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000070318-25-000009
Chunk: 29

Company: TENET HEALTHCARE CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 29
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 the regulations promulgated under the NSA, claiming the regulations unfairly favor insurers in the determination of appropriate reimbursement amounts. We cannot predict the ultimate impact of this or any future litigation nor can we predict any future regulatory changes. In addition, we are unable to fully assess the ultimate impact of the NSA on our business at this time; however, based on our experience to this point, we believe that compliance with the provisions of the NSA will not have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

UNINSURED PATIENTS

Uninsured patients are patients who do not qualify for government programs payments, such as Medicare and Medicaid, do not have some form of private insurance and, therefore, are responsible for their own medical bills. A significant number of our uninsured patients are admitted through our hospitals’ emergency departments and often require high‑acuity treatment that is more costly to provide and, therefore, results in higher billings, which are the least collectible of all accounts.

Self‑pay accounts receivable, which include amounts due from uninsured patients, as well as co‑pays, co‑insurance amounts and deductibles owed to us by patients with insurance, pose significant collectability problems. At December 31, 2024 and 2023, 5% and 4%, respectively, of our Hospital Operations segment’s accounts receivable was self‑pay. Further, a significant portion of our implicit price concessions relates to self‑pay amounts. The revenue cycle management services we provide are subject to various statutes and regulations regarding consumer protection in areas including finance, debt collection and credit reporting activities.

We perform systematic analyses to focus our attention on the drivers of implicit price concessions for each hospital. While emergency department use is the primary contributor to our implicit price concessions in the aggregate, this is not the case at all hospitals. As a result, we have increased our focus on targeted initiatives that concentrate on non‑emergency department patients as well. These initiatives are intended to promote process efficiencies in collecting self‑pay accounts, as well as co‑pay, co‑insurance and deductible amounts owed to us by patients with insurance, that we deem highly collectible. We leverage a statistical‑based collections model that aligns our operational capacity to maximize our collections performance. We are dedicated to modifying and refining our processes as needed, enhancing our technology and improving staff training throughout the revenue cycle process in an effort to increase collections and reduce accounts receivable.

Over the longer term, several other initiatives we have previously announced should also help address the