Suzanne Schmidt

"We had great participation," says Suzanne Schmidt, director of registration services at Cardinal Glennon and SSM Health Care-St.Louis coordinator for the 2005 Heart Walk campaign.

At SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, one of 20 hospitals in the SSM Health Care network, a similar system includes two full-time financial counselors on staff, but there is also an on-site representative of the Missouri Medicaid program to aid in qualifying families, says Suzanne Schmidt, director of registration services for the 190-staffed-bed facility.She notes that hospital registration staff will notify a counselor or the state Medicaid representative whenever an uninsured patient arrives at the emergency department for care.The representatives then immediately contact the family.

Schmidt notes that all the hospitals in the SSM network use a similar approach for assessing funding options for uninsured patients.Cardinal Glennon, however, is the only facility in the network with an on-site Medicaid representative.

During a recent month, Schmidt says Cardinal Glennon completed registration for approximately 9,300 individuals.Of these patients, 125 were referred to the Missouri Medicaid representative for help with applying for state aid, while the hospital's in-house financial counselors helped another 45 families apply for assistance.

"It's critical to speak with people while they are here and to make financial arrangements at that time.We are not going to turn anyone away, but there are so many avenues for us to assist these patients and to do that on the front end just makes sense," Schmidt says.