Laura Glesby Photo
The SalivaDirect Covid testing site on the Green, which serves a handful of uninsured patients each day.
After a decrease in federal funding, New Haven’s largest community health care provider and only hospital system have started to charge uninsured patients $75 for Covid-19 tests.
In mid-June, two weeks after federal pandemic relief funding expired, Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) stopped covering the costs for uninsured patients, meaning that patients would be charged $75 per PCR test.
The hospital system’s policy change has affected patients at other healthcare providers in the city. Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, which treats nearly 50,000 patients, announced that because it sends Covid tests to YNHH laboratories, uninsured patients who receive a PCR Covid test at the community health center will also be charged $75.
According to Cornell Scott Hill’s website, 9 percent of the health center’s patients were uninsured in 2021.
For patients without health insurance, one option is Yale’s SalivaDirect testing site, which administers saliva-based PCR tests out of a shipping container on the New Haven Green. Another is Fair Haven Community Health Care.
CVS and RiteAid no longer offer free PCR tests to people without health insurance at their New Haven locations; Walgreens may charge uninsured patients who do not demonstrate a “medical necessity” for the test.
“We never want to have a charge of any kind stand in the way or create an obstacle for patients accessing care that they need,” said YNHH Senior Vice President Vin Petrini, noting that Covid tests mandated for a medical procedure remain free of charge and that patients can apply for financial assistance if costs are prohibitive.
“Federal support during the brunt of the pandemic was a lifeline for a lot of providers,” Petrini added. Since the start of the pandemic, “we’ve taken a significant financial hit, but we didn’t stop providing care.”
U.S. citizens are eligible to receive a third round of rapid antigen Covid tests from the federal government. Antigen tests are faster but less accurate than PCR tests, and are less sensitive to Covid cases that are early or asymptomatic yet still infectious.
In early August, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reclassified New Haven from an area with “high” Covid transmission rates to “medium.”
On Wednesday afternoon, as commuters sprinted between bus stops and pedestrians paused at park benches, the SalivaDirect site on the New Haven Green remained a source of quiet. An occasional tester walked up to the shipping container, filled out a handful of forms, and spit into large tubes that would soon be transported to a laboratory.
A SalivaDirect staffer who identified herself as Yatina and who has been working at the testing site since June estimated that between one and three uninsured patients get tested at the site each day.
Yatina recently moved to New Haven from Shanghai, and she’s enjoyed getting to meet “every kind of person” who arrives at the testing site — including immigrants like herself.
“When I meet people from my country, I can help them,” she said.