Reply #55: Reality is that many hospitals are bankrupted from treating gun victims [View All]

[billbuckhead]

Gun violence has heavy price

Study: Victims taking toll on budgets, communities.

By Jessie Halladay
[e-mail]
The Courier-Journal

This article appeared on the front page on August 28, 2005

"Louisville's University Hospital treated more than 700 people with gunshot wounds in 2003-04. The cost: More than $18 million.

And those numbers aren't shrinking: Officials say University Hospital is on pace to see 400 gunshot victims this year, at an estimated cost exceeding $10 million.
Gun violence "is a huge, huge public health problem," said Dr. William Smock, an emergency medicine specialist who directed a recent study that outlined those numbers.

And it has implications beyond those shot.

While gunshot victims represent just 6 percent of University's trauma patients, the cost of treating them is virtually eating up the hospital's indigent care budget, according to the study, which the hospital undertook with federal grant money aimed at reducing gun violence."

<http://www.uoflhealthcare.org/f_pressrelease.asp?id=200>

I know, these shooting victims don't matter to some of us.