Tuesday's Number: $214,513

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

Since mid-2012, I've been tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

• This week, there were thirteen new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $223,250.
• There was one satisfied judgment, for $8,737.
• And there were no health care related bankruptcies.

I also track filings for each of the four Syracuse hospitals. Here’s the breakdown for this week: 

• Crouse had six, for $39,819
• St Joseph’s gets a credit of $8,737
• SUNY Upstate added six, for $183,431
• Community, part of Upstate, had no filings.

How does St Joe's get a credit? When there are any, I subtract the satisfied judgments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals; the likelihood is that they've already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now, since I've been tracking this for two and a half years.  

The paper publishes only those accounts of at least $5,000.