UM - Where Poor Is a Four-Letter Word

    Poor is a four-letter word when it comes to the financial status of patients at the two mercenary teaching hospitals operated by the University of Miami's School of Medicine.
   
Which should explain why the UM's School of Medicine COO William Donelan is vexed by the University's long-standing partnership with Miami-Dade's Jackson Memorial Hospital system – which he claims is “insane..
   
Long the primary source of care for Miami-Dade's low income and uninsured residents, Jackson Memorial seems headed down a dark path to become – what Donelan calls – “just another gritty charity-based hospital.”
    In other words,
UM's Donelan is to Hippocrates what Marie Antoinette was to Mother Teresa: a heartless, greedy twit.
   
Not that the two non-profit and tax-exempt hospitals operated by UM's School of Medicine seem to give a rusty catheter for the needs of the poor: Like low income and uninsured patients at UM's "teaching" hospitals are as common as holy water in hell.
   
Consider the 2008 breakdown of the payer mix for total patient admissions:

Hospitals:
Jackson System
Admissions                 73,866
Uninsured                   8,603
Medicaid                     26,873
% of total admits        48%
UM Hospital System
Admissions                  9.948
Uninsured                    247
Medicaid                      768
% of total                      10%
UF Shands System
Admissions                  69,882
Uninsured                     8,706
Medicaid                       16,210
% of total                        36%
All Florida Hospitals
Admissions                  2,401,216
Uninsured                    183,572
Medicaid                        291,518
% of total                       20%

SOURCE: Agency for Health Care Administration


 

 

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