The above chart shows the growth of charity and bad-debt write-offs over the past seven years.  Charity Care is the total of charges written off by WellSpan to provide medical services to those patients who have demonstrated their inability to pay their bills.  Bad Debt is the total of charges written off by WellSpan for services provided to patients who have not paid their bills and who have demonstrated their inability to pay.

Aside from the direct write-offs of charges (as seen in the Charity and Bed Debt Write-off chart), another measure of uncompensated care is the difference between payment received and the actual cost of providing care.  The Medicare and Medicaid programs pay WellSpan far less than it costs to provide care to our Medicare and Medicaid patients.  The graph above displays this shortfall in payment relative to costs for Medicare and Medicaid.  Since we receive no payment for charity or bad-debt services,  the amounts shown on the above graph are the actual costs to provide services to charity and bad debt patients.  For each of the past three years the shortfall in payment relative to costs for these four categories of patients has been greater than $50 million.