Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center provided community benefits – including charity care, unreimbursed care and educational, research and outreach programs and services – valued at $272.6 million during the fiscal year 2014.
The community benefits expenditure, reported to a state government agency, marks an all-time high for the Medical Center and represents an increase of $13.7 million, or 5.3 percent, over the previous fiscal year.
“Wake Forest Baptist has been committed to community health since its founding, and in recent years we have begun to address the broader concept of population health,” said John D. McConnell, M.D., the Medical Center’s CEO. “The community benefits report reflects the many diverse ways we are working to improve health on the individual and community-wide levels throughout our service area.”
Wake Forest Baptist’s expenditure of $92.7 million for the non-reimbursed costs of treating patients covered by Medicare, Medicaid and other non-negotiated government programs accounted for the largest share (34 percent) of the community benefits total.
Medical and health professions education ($77.5 million) was next in terms of expenditure, followed by charity care ($69.3 million) and research not funded by outside sources ($25.5 million).
The Medical Center also spent $5.6 million on community health-improvement initiatives, non-billed services, donations to local organizations and sponsorships of community events, and $2 million on subsidized health programs, including operation of the Downtown Health Plaza in Winston-Salem.
Wake Forest Baptist submitted its community benefits figures for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, in an annual report required by the North Carolina Medical Care Commission, an agency of the state Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Health Service Regulation.
In accordance with the commission’s guidelines, Wake Forest Baptist did not include in its report $67.6 million in bad debt from uncollected charges for services performed.
Additional information about Wake Forest Baptist’s community benefits report is available online at wakehealth.edu/community-benefits-overview.htm.
Media Relations
Mac Ingraham: mingraha@wakehealth.edu, 336-716-3487
Shannon Putnam: news@wakehealth.edu, 336-713-4587