PHLP provides free legal services and advocacy to Pennsylvanians having trouble accessing publicly funded health care coverage or services. For assistance, call our helpline at 1-800-274-3258 or 1-866-236-6310 TTY or e-mail us at staff@phlp.org.

About the Hospital Accountability Project

Health care is expensive. The only reason many consumers can afford health care is because they have health insurance. Unfortunately, health insurance often doesn't cover everything a consumer needs, or may have limits on how much coverage is provided. So even people with health insurance end up with hospital bills that they can not possibly pay. Often these consumers are referred to as "underinsured". Of course, there are also about a million Pennsylvania residents who are uninsured, meaning they have no insurance coverage at all. These "uninsured" consumers also end up with hospital bills they can never pay. In the worst cases, underinsured or uninsured consumers may simply be denied medical treatment because hospitals known they won't be able to pay.

Although hospitals in Pennsylvania routinely bill consumers who are underinsured and uninsured, and sometimes refuse to give them medical treatment, the hospitals are actually required by law to provide care for people who can't fully pay their medical bills. Why? The answer is that almost all hospitals receive a variety of funds which are supposed to be used to help patients who can't fully pay their bills. These funds are sometimes called “uncompensated care” funds or “charity care” funds. Hospitals receive this money specifically to help people, and are not supposed to use the money for other purposes.

How come hospitals don't provide all of the charity care they are supposed to? There are a few reasons. The first reason is that hospitals have a lot of freedom to make their charity care policy in any way they want, so sometimes the policy is so weak it doesn't help people. And even though this is against the law, the state of Pennsylvania doesn't really scrutinize what the hospitals are doing. Another reason is that patients may never find out about the hospital's charity care policy. Still another reason is that the charity care policy may have an application that is so long or complicated that most consumers can't fill it out correctly, so the application just gets rejected.

The Hospital Accountability Project is an initiative generously funded by Community Catalyst to examine and improve hospital charity care policies and practices statewide, and to ultimately help consumers who are underinsured and uninsured get the medical attention they are entitled to, without being charged unfair amounts of money. This website provides information for consumers to learn more about their rights, and to learn about the policies of different hospitals around the state.