AIDS burden puts hospitals in cash bind

Large numbers of AIDS patients are concentrated in a smallnumber of hospitals, threatening those facilities with financialdisaster, a new study says.

The survey of 322 facilities, conducted by the private NationalPublic Health and Hospital Institute in Washington, found that morethan half of the patients diagnosed with acquired immune deficiencysyndrome are being treated in just 5 percent of the nation'shospitals.

Because many AIDS patients are either uninsured or covered byMedicaid, which pays only a portion of the costs of treatment, thehospitals lost an average of more than $3,500 per AIDS patient.

While every hospital in the survey lost money …