An Open Letter to State Auditor Adam Edelen.
Re: An appeal to make broad your audit of UofL Hospital.
Dear Mr. Edelen,
Although it is like pulling teeth, small amounts of information about the financing of the University of Louisville and its University Hospital are slowly becoming public. The public is aware that your office is looking at the University’s handling of its QCCT funding for indigent care in its hospital. I am writing to try to convince your office that examination of QCCT funding alone is insufficient and that to fully judge whether the state and local components of that fund are truly being used to the best advantage of the public, other aspects of University accounts must also be examined.
For example, in last week’s release of information in response to questions submitted by potential responders to the University’s RFP for a new partner, the amounts of transfers from University Hospital funds to the University were outlined to the tune of $74 million of the $430 million of hospital clinical revenues. More than 17% of hospital revenues go directly to the University! Some of this is Medicare money designated to pay the salaries of Residents, but under its ongoing veil of secrecy the University does not detail where its money came from, nor how it is spent.
Given that the University has a long history of pooling its state money and using it as it sees fit, and in the wake of the Passport and other scandals, the public is entitled to a fully justified explanation. How else can we know whether the $34.4 million of current QCCT funding is too much, too little, or just right. A dollar of money drawn from the QCCT means another dollar that might legitimately be used to support indigent care can be spent elsewhere. Indeed, I believe the whole concept of the QCCT fund needs to be revisited. Why, for example, should not state indigent dollars follow the indigent, no matter where that service is provided? Why shackle the indigent to a place they may not care to go? Does the current QCCT reimbursement formula lead to artificially higher charges to all patients at the hospital? Does having a captive patient population blunt faculty motivation to make University Hospital the most desirable and highest quality hospital in town? To make such determinations, the public needs a full audit of the University of Louisville, its Foundations and Hospital. Continue reading “Review of UofL Hospital by Kentucky Auditor of State Accounts.”