Evening star., 1948-12-10

gency and eight other hospita
emergency INDECENT patients, refuses
to pay. Thee reason is that the
man has an equity of $3.50 in a small
home.
The Community Chest Federation
helps pay hospitals for treating low
income patients. But its fund drive
has failed. Its current hospitaliza-
ton funds are running out. 1t also
expects the District to pay for in
digent patients. So the hospital
simply doesn't get paid.
The same man, rushed to tax
supported Gallinger Hospital, is ad-
mitted at once. He pays small
amount if he is able. If not, he
/ gets free care.
$150 a Month Top.
A Washington man, with a wife
and two children, has a monthly
income of $155. He is injured in
an accident. An ambulance takes
him to emergency Hospital. The
District won't pay anything toward
his treatment because he makes
more than $3.50 month.
The same man is admitted to
Gallinger Hospital. And, even if his
income is as high as $3.50 a month,
the District stands the expense of
treatment. But the Hospital Per-
NIT Bureau makes an arrangement
with the patient to pay what the
bureau determines he can afford to-
ward his medical costs.
Before last July, the District had
an agreement with only three hos
pitals. Then, as now, it paid only
for emergency patients who had
lived in the District for a year.
But it accepted responsibility for
these patients, even If they could
pay only a part of their hospital
costs. The family income standards
used to determine eligibility for
District responsibility at Gallinger
were adopted by the permit bureau
to determine eligibility at the three
private hospitals because no other
standards had been specified.
Order of Congress.
Congress ordered the District, be-
ginning in July, however. to extend
the contracts to nine private, nom
profit hospitals here, paying up to
SO for each day of bed care.
Almost Immediately. Health De-
partment officials said, the District
Building directed that the Hospital
Permit Bureau stop making part
pay collections from these emer-
igency, resident, INDECENT patients.
The result is that the bureau, since
July. has paid hospitals only fol
treating patients whose incomes are
below the absolute minimum stand
ards used to determine indigency
at Gallinger.
A more important result, officials
feel, is that-under the sudden, rigid
limitation-hospitals have been able
to make only a part of anticipated
claims on a $690,00O appropriation
Congress gave the District for the
purpose.
A September, 1916, Commissioners
order bars District residents from
getting ordinary medical care at
Gallinger, if they own as much as
$500 in property. 1t specifically al
lows patients owning that much
property to get care, however, if
they enter the hospital as emer-
gencies. But the District will not
pay private hospitals for giving such
care, even in emergencies.
Emergency Cases.
Another inconsistency is that in
digent patients who live outside
the District also can get free care
at Gallinger in emergency cases,
although officials believe the city
should not be responsible for such
persons.
The city will pay the nine pri-
vate hospitals for treating these en-
ergency, nonresidential patients If
they are taken to the hospital in a
District owned ambulance or one
sent by the District Emergency Am
bulance Service. But it will not
pay for such patients conveyed by
any other means.
The Health Department, mean
while, has proposed two fundamen-
tai changes in the present policies
10 bring them into line with what
officials believe to be the intent
of Congress. Both points have met
stiff opposition at the District Build
ing.
The first proposes that the $500
property equity limit be modified.
It recommends that patients af-
fected by the limit be barred from
free medical care but that they pay