DENVER — Denver Health estimates it will lose $155.5 million from uncompensated costs this year, an increase of 10% from last year.
Denver7 has been following Denver Health's plea for more funding for the past few months. On Tuesday, Denver Health leaders shared recent figures with Denver City Council members during a hearing on the city's proposed 2025 budget.
Uncompensated costs have risen rapidly over the past few years, as has the number of uninsured patients visiting Denver Health, the state's largest safety net hospital.
Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne told council members that 61,000 uninsured patients visited the hospital system in 2022. In 2023, 75,000 uninsured patients visited.
Lynne told Denver7 in June that Denver Health prides itself on treating everyone.
“We see everyone, regardless of their ability to pay,” she said at the time.
Unlike other hospitals, Lynne said Denver Health provides care to uninsured patients beyond the emergency room, even housing patients to make sure they can get ongoing treatment.
“We now have 34 apartments for our patients so that we aren’t discharging them to the street,” she said. “And those are all costs that we incur that we get no reimbursement for.”
Lynne told council members that $118 million of the uncompensated costs will come from treating uninsured patients who live in Denver. Yet, Denver city funding to reimburse the hospital is only a fraction of that.
Since 1996, the City and County of Denver has only provided $30 million in annual funding to Denver Health, despite health care costs and the number of patient visits increasing. Lynne said the Denver Health sales tax ballot initiative will help tremendously.
The Denver Health sales tax ballot initiative would increase the city's sales tax by 0.34%, generating about $70 million every year. If approved by voters in November, it would push Denver's sales tax rate to 9.15%. Analysts at the Common Sense Institute said that would surpass Boulder's sales tax rate and would be the highest sales tax rate among the 10 largest cities on the Front Range.
“Nobody likes more taxes. This should have been remedied a long time ago,” Lynne told Denver7. “We have a lot of advocates in the business community and other communities. We are going to have to join forces to convince the public that 3.4 cents on $10 is really not going to be a lot."
Lynne said Denver Health has implemented a hiring freeze, along with changes to employee benefits. If the Denver Health sales tax measure fails in November, the CEO told council members there would be hard decisions.
"We will be faced with eliminating positions across Denver Health or shutting down services,” said Lynne. “I think that’s not a surprise to anyone.”
Cutting services would be devastating to people who depend on Denver Health. Antonio Franco Sánchez said he discovered a serious medical issue after Denver Health's mobile center visited his neighborhood in southwest Denver.
"It was the doctor in the clinic who discovered the problem that I had," he said. "It was because of the help that I received from that I was able to receive a surgery."
While most of the uncompensated costs are from patients who live in Denver, about $37.4 million come from patients who live outside of Denver. Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn said he’d like to see other counties step up and provide financial help.
“It would be nice to get a little more cooperation and not be entirely or mostly at the expense of Denver,” Flynn said.
Lynne said she has reached out to leaders in surrounding counties but they weren’t interested.
“And they, as friendly as they could be, said, ‘Don’t waste your time. We’ve got problems with fire. We’ve got problems with other kinds of services, and we don’t think healthcare is a county function,’” Lynne said.
“I do feel like we should probably have a tougher conversation with folks in the surrounding counties,” said Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis.
In addition to uninsured patients, Lynne said Denver Health has also seen a rise in visits from unhoused patients. She said 8,500 patients reported being homeless in 2022. That increased to 14,000 in 2023.
The Denver Health ballot initiative is one of two Denver sales tax proposals on the November ballot. Voters will also decide whether to approve a 0.5% sales tax increase to pay for affordable housing.
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