Tuesday's Number: $274,978

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:

• ten new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers, totaling $165,585; 
• two satisfied judgments, totaling $14,644;
• and two bankruptcies, adding another $124,037. 

Here’s the breakdown by hospital: 

• Crouse had three, with a net of $1,297.
• SUNY Upstate had eleven, totaling $273,681.
• St Joe’s and Community had none. 

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. This week, Crouse was the beneficiary of both repayments. 

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