GHPC presents to Greater Grady Task Force
June 26, 2007
Contact:
Sallie Barker
404-413-0289
sbarker@gsu.edu
ATLANTA -- The Georgia Health Policy Center presented to the Greater Grady Task Force analysis of the Atlanta market’s uninsured admission patterns to inform solutions Grady Hospital’s financial crisis.
The task force was formed to address the issues that threaten Grady Health System’s long-term viability, and one proposed solution is to charge counties based on the number of uninsured who seek care at Grady.
Georgia State University President and task force member Carl Patton said, “There is a widely held assumption that if only Grady were paid for the uninsured patients who come from other counties, there would be no funding crisis. The results of the Health Policy Center’s research refute this assumption.”
Center Director Karen Minyard gave an overview of how uninsured patients in Grady’s five-county market move across county lines to seek care. According to the Center's research, bordering counties send some inpatients to Fulton County; however, a very small percentage of those seek care at Grady.
Minyard said, “Even though Grady cares for a large number of uninsured, some the admissions patterns are not what we expected.” One pattern involved Gwinnett County. Of the 1,470 Gwinnett admissions in Fulton County, 164 occurred at Grady, and other metro areas across Georgia are wrestling with similar patterns.
“This is a bigger question for us than what to do about Grady. This is a question of what to do about the large number of people without health insurance, who live in our state and communities,” Minyard said. “This is a question of how to deal with the rising costs of health care caused in large part by technology and in some part by poor health.”
A diverse group of 17 top business leaders serve on the Greater Grady Task force, created by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce at the request of the board of directors of the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority. The task force has been studying Grady Health System’s finances, structures and operations since the task force members were named on April 9. The task force will release its final recommendations July 13.
Georgia Health Policy Center, housed within Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, conducts, analyzes and disseminates qualitative and quantitative findings to connect decision makers with the objective research and guidance needed to make informed decisions about health policy and programs. Today the Center is at work throughout Georgia and 48 additional states, helping communities achieve health improvement.
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