Caffarini K - Bad debt levels fell among for-profit hospitals in the first quarter of 2008. Still, these hospitals continue to have a higher percentage of unpaid medical bills than physicians and nonprofit hospitals. Hospitals have been more aggressive in collecting co-payments up front and have improved efforts externally and internally to collect debt. This has balanced a change in for-profit hospitals' accounting techniques. They have become more conservative in their assumptions concerning how many of their patients would pay for their services, which results in more debt being written off as uncollectable.
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