Hospitals Feeling Effects of Soaring Population

Bob McClay
KTAR
August 10, 2007 @ 7:37am

Valley hospitals are feeling the strain of Maricopa County's increasing population.

"Our burn center is overcrowded," said Bil Bruno of the Maricopa County Medical Center. "We have burn patients spread throughout the whole hospital because our burn unit is filled."

Bruno says that every area of his hospital is packed, but every patient gets served. Some of them may not be legal residents.

"Someone shows up at our emergency room, we have to take care of them, or they'll shut us down," he said. "We can't ask questions like that."

Hospitals are also having to deal with a rising number of uninsured patients.

"We call it uncompensated care. In other words, people come in, we provide health care services, and then we find they either don't have insurance, or they won't or can't pay us. That is up substantially over the last year."

There is also the issue of communicating with non-English speaking patients. The hospital employees several interpreters on staff to deal with the issue.

Last updated on December 16, 2009