People are still hitting the emergency room instead of seeing a doctor regularly, raising their own out-of-pocket costs as well as hospitals' financial exposure.

Hospitals' costs for uncompensated care and unreimbursed expenses are still increasing, although the pace of that increase has slowed a bit since 2016.

According to a Definitive Healthcare analysis of 3,855 hospitals. the grand total for uncompensated care and reimbursement shortfalls—including free and discounted care for low-income patients, unpaid bills and unreimbursed costs from Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs—came to a grand total of $12.8 million in 2018. That's up from $11.2 million in 2015.

From 2015 to 2016, the rate of growth in uncompensated care rose 8 percent, although after that it slowed down to approximately 3 percent annually.