Are Colorado hospitals acting like charities or Fortune 500 companies? Lawmakers want to know, too

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The hospital and provider industry has continued to consolidate in the past four years, raising concerns about who's benefitting from those mergers and acquisitions and where money spent at Colorado hospitals is going

have illuminated hospitals’ books and helped guide policymaking for state leaders focused on cutting the costs of care.

“The reason why the state has an interest in knowing is because hospitals have received the precious nonprofit status,” said Soper, who sits on his local hospital’s governing board. “Which means they’re not paying property taxes, they’re not paying business personal property taxes … and they’re not paying sales tax, which is also a major benefit when you’re buying millions of dollars worth of products.

If the bill is passed as written, the state wouldn’t be able to step in and stop any of those acquisitions, nor would it be able to stop big systems from moving money. But it would give policymakers a chance to warn hospitals if they’re making risky financial moves, Soper said, while also giving insight into what’s driving up costs, an issue that Gov. Jared Polis and top legislators have repeatedly said is a priority.

Tom Rennell, the Colorado Hospital Association’s senior vice president of financial policy, said the group is broadly supportive of transparency. But, he continued, hospitals are already reporting a significant amount of financial information. He said hospitals move money around their systems on a daily basis, and he questioned why state policymakers would want more information if they weren’t capable of taking action to intervene.

 

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200k Americans are killed by preventable errors made by medical providers every year. That is the most conservative estimate. 1k are killed by police and the vast majority of those are justified self defense. How much time as your newspaper spent covering each?

This is turning into a national problem, and happening in many industries across the board.

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