HUDSON — Over the next three days, 1,156 Hudson residents in medical debt will open their mailboxes and see a letter from Columbia Memorial Health.
Instead of another bill, the envelope will contain just the opposite: notification that they no longer owe money to the hospital.
Spark of Hudson, a nonprofit focusing on the less-fortunate in the rapidly gentrifying city, donated about $1.2 million to the hospital to erase the debt.
Susan Danziger, who co-founded Spark of Hudson with Albert Wenger in the early days of the pandemic, said medical debt compounds the trauma of injury and sickness.
“We can’t help with the sickness, but we can certainly help with the debt,’ she said.
The organization was interested in “direct giving,” according to Danziger, which she defined as “actionable things that will really help people from one day to the next.”
“Medical debt is just something that weighs on people,” she added.
The nearly 1,200 people getting their debt paid represents almost one-fifth of the small city’s population.
The repayments are not being applied to people actively repaying money owed to the hospital, but to those in real need, according to Spark of Hudson Operations Manager Analisa Allen, such as patients who are on payment plans or whose debt was being handled by collections agencies.
Spark of Hudson has pioneered other forms of direct giving in the city. The organization is funding Hudson’s Universal Basic Income program, where dozens of residents making below the local median income of $39,346 receive monthly payments of $500.
The organization was also behind the then-anonymous paying of all the back rent owed at Bliss Towers, Hudson’s public housing project, last year, according to Allen, and has worked with Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood to pay off back rents owed at other properties.
Spark of Hudson first approached Columbia Memorial Health about a year-and-a-half ago with the project, according to Allen. The hospital is handling all the payments, and Spark is not aware who the people are who will benefit from the donation.
Columbia Memorial Health Chief Financial Officer Bryan Mahoney said the hospital was happy to work with Spark on the initiative.
“As a community hospital, we have always done all we can to help our patients meet the financial obligations associated with their care, and at the same time generate the revenue necessary to sustain our operations and care centers,” according to Mahoney. “To aid our patients, we offer in-house facilitated enrollment counselors who help patients find a health plan that meets their needs, including no cost health plans for those eligible…Supporting the Spark of Hudson’s program to pay the bills of Hudson city residents was a natural extension of our efforts to mitigate the financial impact of care whenever possible.”
Spark of Hudson is planning on opening up a center for vocational training this year, according to Allen. Which vocations the center will teach has not been decided, but the idea was to offer job training to residents, including those who could not get to Columbia-Greene Community College, which is located outside the city in Greenport.
Despite the chic stores on Hudson’s Warren Street, the city’s poverty rate is still far higher than the national average, resting at 23.5 percent in 2021, according to most recent census data.
Danziger said many residents were in disbelief at the benevolence at the Universal Basic Income program when it launched, and she feared some residents receiving the letters from the hospital may think it was a mistake, or that it was just another bill.
“Don’t throw away the letters,” she said. “This is real.”
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