The cost of providing health care to migrants who have arrived in the Denver metro area over the past year is hitting hard at UCHealth hospitals, headlined by the increase in the number of people at the flagship hospital in Aurora.
“The number we believe very conservatively in the last three months is almost 2,500 patients and probably more. And it keeps increasing every day,” said Dr. Richard Zane, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at CU School of Medicine and head of the emergency departments and urgent cares across the UCHealth system.
System-wide, the health care system says it has counted 5,800 new migrant patients received care from November through January. That’s 69% growth in that patient population over the same period a year earlier.
Simply counting the population that shows up for care is difficult. Researchers counted people without insurance or social security number who said they were from another country or volunteered they are migrants.