Almost two years after instituting a required payment upfront for non-emergency services provided in the emergency department, Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center is rolling back that policy.
Alterations to the computer systems and procedures at the hospital have made it possible to end the charging of $200 upfront for non-emergency patients who go to the emergency room.
“Now when people needing primary care come into the emergency room, they go to the primary care system and not the emergency department,” said Norman Price, the hospital’s chief executive officer, on Thursday.
The hospital board approved the $200 fee in January 2017.
At the time, Price said the 50,000 visits to the emergency department logged each year — half of which were not for emergency care, and many of which were never paid for — were putting a great strain on the hospital’s budget.
Specifically, the hospital was subsidizing contracts with companies that provide emergency room doctors to the tune of $1 million per year, Price said then.
At the time, the hospital had also learned of $3 million in cuts to its Medicaid reimbursements, making continued subsidy of the emergency department much more difficult.
Price noted that people who came to the emergency room seeking services more in line with primary care had always been shunted physically from the emergency department to a primary care division within the hospital, but until now the hospital had no way to move the admission and billing from emergency to primary care.
The $200 fee was intended to help offset the higher cost of emergency care and emergency department resources used by patients who eventually were moved to primary care.
Going to the emergency room “is the most expensive way to get primary care,” Price said. “It’s like taking a jet to Jackson. You could drive in your car and it would be more economical, but you take that jet instead.”
With the systems and procedures now in place, “we can channel people someplace that’s not as expensive,” he said. “Emergency physicians are not there for primary care. Their contract is not for that. The primary care people are employees of the hospital.”
While people who come in for primary care will be charged, Price said that process works like a regular doctor’s office and usually will entail a charge of less than $200 during the visit.
