Escambia County has struggled with providing medical care to its uninsured residents for decades. Baptist Hospital and Ascension Sacred nearly evenly split the charity costs for years, with Sacred slightly ahead and HCA Florida West, a for-profit hospital, handling about $1 million annually…until recently.
According to state reports, Baptist today ranks third behind Sacred and HCA Florida West, carrying only 17% of the hospitals’ charity care costs.
Tracking down each hospital’s charitable care can be confusing. The hospitals closely guard their financial data, and rarely do they publicly criticize each other’s marketing. But how much charity care are the hospitals doing? Not their bad debt write-offs but their actual charity costs.
Inweekly found an independent source. Check out “Who Cares?” in this week’s issue, which goes live on inweekly.net at 11 a.m. today.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is about to begin maintenance dredging of the Lower Pensacola Federal Navigation channel in the Perdido Key area. A cutter dredge and hydraulic pipeline will be used to excavate the channel to a maximum depth of 39 feet.
About 1.7 million cubic yards of the dredged sediment will be placed on land and nearshore on Perdido Key from the eastern end of Johnson Beach Road to the eastern tip of Perdido Key Island. Read more.
