Tuesday's Number: $24,379

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 four new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $44,662.
• There was one satisfied judgment, for $20,283.
• And there were no bankruptcies listed.

By hospital, here’s the breakdown: 

• Crouse had four, totaling $38,861
• SUNY got a credit this week of $20,283.
• St. Joseph’s and Community (part of Upstate), had no filings.

Where’s that SUNY credit come from?  When there are any, I subtract 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

A regional healthcare center accounted for the $5,801 difference between the overall total and the local hospital totals. 

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