Opinion: Barton Health offers a helping hand
By Dick Derby
Barton Health, along with its affiliated healthcare facilities, treated more than 165,000 patients in 2010. With a population of 21,403 in the city of South Lake Tahoe and 181,058 residents in El Dorado County, Barton continues to serve the community and visitors alike. While, businesses in and around the lake accommodate “locals” by providing free services and discounts, Barton has done the same for years with free or low cost prevention screenings, wellness seminars and through our financial assistance program called Helping Hands.
Helping Hands was designed to assist South Lake Tahoe area residents. In the past few years, many families and individuals have suffered from the ongoing recession, endured lay-offs, both big and small business owners have closed their doors, lost insurance, have high insurance deductibles or work two jobs to provide for their families. At Barton, we are attempting to relieve some of the financial burden of medical bills with our Helping Hands Program.
Dick Derby
The Helping Hands Program provides financial assistance to local area residents who do not qualify for programs such as Access for Infants and Mothers, County Medical Services Program, Medi-Cal, Medicare, Nevada Medicaid, Douglas County Social Services or the Victim of Crime Program.
A major misconception is that financial help is only for those in the lower income brackets, but most of Tahoe’s middle class is eligible for some level of discount. The program works on a sliding scale of annual income and family unit size. Even patients with insurance may be eligible for a lower rate. For more information on Barton’s Helping Hands Program policy, go online to find a copy our financial assistance policy.
Examples of those who may eligible for a discount:
|
Number of people in household |
Annual household income |
Eligible discount |
| Family of 4 |
$89,400 |
25% |
| Retired Couple |
$51,485 |
50% |
| Single mother with 2 children |
$55,590 |
75% |
| Family of 4 w/ high insurance deductible |
$55,875 |
100% |
In addition to the Helping Hands program, Barton offers primary care and specialty physician services at the Barton Community Clinic using a similar sliding scale based on annual income and family unit size. This allows Barton to continue the tradition of offering preventative care, family planning and services for the ill or elderly at little or no cost to qualifying patients.
Barton Health is a nonprofit healthcare system, and as a part of our mission, we strive to deliver safe, high quality healthcare to our community through accessible health programs, including wellness lab draws, health fairs, lectures and discounts on our services for those who qualify. We provided more than $4.2 million in charity care in 2010, which was as a result of providing low-cost options through our Helping Hands Program. Barton Memorial Hospital is here for our community and staffed 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, for emergency care.
As the largest employer in the city of South Lake Tahoe, we are proud to employ more than 900 employees. At Barton we work together to provide consistently exceptional care to our employees, visitors and the community at large. As a nonprofit hospital, Barton provides emergency medical services to our visitors and community members without regard of their ability to pay, in addition to offering the Helping Hands Program mentioned above. Our physicians, nurses and staff specialize in pediatrics, women and men’s health, emergency care, rehabilitation, orthopedics, general and specialty surgery, and serve the youngest patients in our Family Birthing Center to the oldest patients in our Skilled Nursing Facility. Prevention and education programs are developed and maintained to benefit the public and we provide leading-edge technology, necessary medical equipment, recruitment of the best and brightest physicians in the nation, and cover general operational costs such as food service, housekeeping, facility maintenance and improvement.
Barton Memorial Hospital’s healthcare fees are less than a majority of California hospitals. As a rural facility, with the only emergency department and birthing center in the area — amongst many other critical medical services, we are here to serve our community. As businesses and government programs continue to struggle through these tough economic times, my hope is that individuals and families alike take advantage of our Helping Hands Program. We are here to continue to provide the best medical services and fulfill patients’ needs right in their own backyard.
To find out more about Barton’s Helping Hands Program, go online, call (530) 543.5908 or email patientaccts@bartonhealth.org.
Dick Derby is vice president of finance at Barton Health. He is also the past president of the South Lake Tahoe Rotary Club, a board member of California Hospital Insurance and is a member of the Health Care Financial Management Association.
So anyone who has no insurance, and has income higher than those ranges, you will charge full rate, without the benefit of the adjustment that an insurance company would make?
The best choice for anyone who is not low income, and does not have health insurance is to go off hill, where medical practitioners and facilities will give everyone, regardless of income bracket up to 50% discount, and even more than that at times. There also are some very good individual practitioners in town, that will work with you. Barton was never one of them, in my experiences.
Always negotiate your price up front, whenever not life threatening.
Ok, well then, perhaps we should look at the ties that the broken state/fed government(s)… (hope and change has not changed anything) have placed on the “not for profit” hospital…Barton. For example; what we ALL pay for those falsely on medi-cal, CMSP, SSI-disability, and workers comp. You all know who you are…opportunists…like the local bruins…raiding left out trash…only the local bruins have a bounty on their heads. Why work when you can get a handout?
The main difference between humans and other animals?….We make conscious decisions…and that makes us smarter?…huh.
They left out a category, single mother of 3 with a deadbeat ex-husband.
I was on the recieving end of the Barton Helping Hands program. Three years ago I had a unexpected medical emergency that landed me in the hospital for a week. My high priced personal insurance required me to come up with $3500 before any benefit could be paid. While I was in the hospital someone from the administration dept. came to offer me an application for this program. I thought that there was no way that I could qualify as Im a home owner and a business owner. I did go ahead and applied for the program and thought that there was no way I would ever get any assistance. About a month later while out of town my husband called me to tell me that we had been granted the assistance and the hospital waived my $3500 deductable. I was gobsmacked and to this day will choose to use the local medical resources jsut so I know that there are quality and qualified medical professionals and facilities near where I live. Thank You Barton Health!!!
That’s nice that Barton did that for you. All I’ve ever gotten from them is threats I’d be sent to collections for bills I’d already paid. But that was awhile ago.
And when I had cancer they rarely managed to get my labwork reports to my oncologists before my appointments, even though they were usually a week apart.
I’ll use them in emergency, but that’s about it.
Take 25% of Barton CEO’s $600,000 a year income and you’d help a lot more people than giving him that much money does. It’s utterly ridiculous that he is given so much money especially in this town while they charge all of us to cover that kind of “salary,” think of all the jobs cut that he could have saved and I bet he gets free medical too.
600k! If that is true, it’s totally shameful for a non profit, not so non profit IMO. More like profit for my self, but no shareholders to contend with, sweet deal.