Tuesday's Number $183,741

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 likely a patient 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 judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $167,608.
• There were two satisfied judgments, totaling $11,988
• And there was one bankruptcy, for $28,119.

By hospital, here’s the breakdown: 

• Crouse had seven, totaling $56,770
• St Joe’s had two, totaling $21,340
• And SUNY Upstate had six, for $96,818

When there are any, I subtract the repayments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals, under the likelihood that they’ve already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now. Crouse and SUNY Upstate benefited this week, by $6,848 and $5,138 respectively.

There was a judgment totaling $8,813 for a regional medical center, which accounts for the balance of this week’s total.  

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