Michelle Crouch | The Charlotte Ledger/NC Health News

As hospitals buy up medical offices and specialty clinics, hospital facility fees for routine doctor’s visits catch patients off-guard.

All 99 of the state’s hospitals have signed onto a program that rewards them for beefing up their charity care policies and forgiving old medical debt for low- and middle-income patients.

Gov. Roy Cooper and state health officials want to offer enhanced Medicaid funding to hospitals that agree to cancel existing medical debt for low-income patients and establish robust charity care policies. A national organization that tracks health care policy said it’s not aware of similar initiatives.

After Hours Urgent Care Center opened in May 2024 in the Charlotte area. While most urgent care centers close at 8 p.m., it stays open until 1 a.m. Monday through Saturday.

Atrium and Novant won’t sell their debt to a charity that buys medical debt and forgives it, saying they already have charity care policies. A retired Atrium physician is on a quest to change that.

The new North Carolina law was passed in the waning hours of the legislative session, but advocates worry it may go too far and hurt mental health patients.

Atrium Health, the state’s top collector of medical debt in recent years, has quietly stopped suing patients for unpaid medical bills. Patient advocates praised the move but noted that hundreds of people still have judgments against them.

A shortage of psychiatrists is forcing teens in crisis into crowded emergency rooms and inpatient centers as anxiety and depression surge; "the constant answer was wait, wait and wait."

Dozens of children have been forced to sleep on the floor of Mecklenburg County offices over the past year because of a severe shortage of foster homes and crisis beds, according to the county Department of Social Services.

A critical shortage of nursing home inspectors and a surge of complaints means some residents wait months for the state to investigate problems.