Chattanooga’s annual Riverbend Festival is replacing their iconic pins with wristbands this year for patrons to enter the site.Erlanger needs ignored by city, county
America’s Essential Hospitals, a national foundation, recently reported that among the nation’s public hospitals, Erlanger provides the greatest amount of safety-net care for the least amount of local government funding.
It also is the local hospital that, thanks largely to a perfect storm of health care funding changes and the state’s failure to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, was forced to provide more than $92 million in free care in the past year — up from $86 million in charity care the previous year.
But all that is falling on deaf ears in local government this budget cycle.
Even after voting last week to give Hamilton County more control over Erlanger Health System’s board of trustees, Hamilton County leaders aren’t ready to boost local financial support. The county mayor’s proposed budget has the same $1.5 million contribution that the county has given the hospital for 37 years.