Tuesday's Number: $509,973

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 29 new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $502,251.
•  There were no satisfied judgments.
•  And there was one health care related bankruptcy, for $7,722.

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

• Crouse had seven, for $60,339
• St Josephs had two, totaling $16,304
• SUNY Upstate added 20, for $398,105
• Community, part of Upstate, had no filings.

There was one judgment for another medical provider totaling $35,225 which makes up the balance.

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.