Metropolitan Atlanta Hospital Accountability Project

In January 2009, Georgia Watch was awarded a two-year grant to help expand access to affordable health care for uninsured and underinsured consumers in the metro area. Called the Metropolitan Atlanta Hospital Accountability Project, or HAP, we’ll examine the challenges low-income, uninsured and underinsured patients face in the metro Atlanta area by surveying consumers throughout the metro area, and analyzing the financial aid policies at area for profit and nonprofit hospitals. We’ll also look at current public policies that force hospitals to give free or low-cost care to the state’s uninsured and underinsured consumers, and come up with ways to make those policies better.

Approximately 1,656,430 – 18 percent – of Georgia’s residents have no insurance, and a little more than half of all Americans who file for bankruptcy in the United States do so because of medical bills. Three-quarters of those patients had health insurance at the time of illness or injury. Of the 100 counties in the nation with the highest rates of bankruptcy in 2006, 45 were in Georgia. By helping ensure access to affordable care for the metro area’s patients, we hope to curb those bankruptcy numbers.

For HAP, Georgia Watch and its partners will survey consumers who are either uninsured or who have insurance with high deductibles or poor coverage. These surveys will be kept 100 percent confidential, and no identifying information will be retained or released to the public. We’ll use the anonymous answers from the surveys in a report we’ll release in January 2010.

In addition, we’re working with some area hospitals to see how much free or low-cost care they provide. We will also look at how hospitals and consumers use the Indigent Care Trust Fund (ICTF), a state-sponsored program that pays hospitals for health care for low-income people.

Once underinsured and uninsured consumers, their needs and the practices and of area hospitals are identified, Georgia Watch and project collaborators will develop a list of best practices for hospitals, as well as make public policy recommendations.

We’ll examine hospitals in the following counties: Barrow, Bartow, Butts, Carroll, Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Haralson, Henry, Jasper, Meriwether, Newton, Paulding, Pickens, Rockdale, Spalding and Walton.

National health care policy group Community Catalyst provided the funding for this grant, as well as funding for similar projects are in 14 other states. Official project collaborators are the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Concerned Black Clergy, Georgia Legal Services Program, Atlanta Legal Aid Society and WonderRoot to achieve our goals.

There are many volunteer opportunities with this project, including consumer surveying. We also want to talk to as many uninsured and underinsured patients as possible, and are looking for volunteers to help find folks who are willing to be surveyed.

For more information, please contact project manager Holly Lang at (404) 525-1085 or via email.