Northeast Florida’s largest hospital and central caregiver for its neediest patients is in dire straits due to a deepening hole of debt, a costly deal with Jacksonville’s jail and a worsening deficit it faces for treating poor people, according to the Jacksonville Council Auditor’s Office.
UF Health Jacksonville’s grim financial results last year puts the onus on the city to decide how it will address rising health care costs for poor patients going forward. Council Auditor Kim Taylor detailed in a special report released Wednesday some of the tough decisions the City Council may need to make.
The hospital’s struggles, Taylor found, come at a cost to Jacksonville taxpayers, and unlike in every other county in Florida, Jacksonville has no dedicated tax-funding sources available. Meanwhile, the hospital has also faced credit rating downgrades that hurt its standing with private investors.
As Northeast Florida’s primary safety-net hospital, UF Health treats a larger share of uninsured and Medicaid-insured patients than others. It has also held a contract with Jacksonville’s city-county government for decades as the region’s indigent-care provider, treating uninsured patients who have nowhere else to go. That contract, currently set to end in March 2028, has become a vital source of its funding.
The new report “reflects a reality common to many safety-net hospitals across the country,” UF Health spokesman Dan Leveton stated in an email to The Tributary.
“The skyrocketing costs of providing health care like ours also means we need to find additional funding moving forward,” the hospital spokesman wrote. He added that “we look forward to working hand-in-hand with local officials” and “are incredibly thankful to the city” for its decades of funding and multimillion-dollar boosts “to help offset some of the costs of treating our most vulnerable patients” in recent years.
