Nashville General Hospital is a safety-net facility funded by the Tennessee capital metropolis. For a affected person with out insurance coverage, that is presupposed to be one of the best place to go in a metropolis with many hospitals. But for the uninsured, it could have been the worst selection in 2019.
Its emergency room was taking extra sufferers to courtroom for unpaid medical payments than every other hospital or follow on the town. A WPLN investigation discovered the physician-staffing agency that runs the ER sued 700 sufferers in Davidson County throughout 2019.
They embrace sufferers reminiscent of Sonya Johnson, a 52-year-old social employee and single mom. By juggling her care between a nonprofit clinic and Nashville General, Johnson had found out easy methods to handle her well being issues, despite the fact that she was, till not too long ago, uninsured.
In 2018, she went to see her physician, who costs sufferers on a sliding scale. Her tongue was swollen and he or she was feeling weak. The prognosis? Severe anemia.
“He called me back that Halloween day and said, ‘I need you to get to the emergency [room], stat — and they’re waiting on you when you get there,’” she recalled.
Nashville General saved her in a single day and gave her a blood transfusion. They wished to maintain her a second night time — however she was fearful in regards to the mounting value and requested to be despatched dwelling.
Staying the one night time meant she was admitted to the hospital itself, and the invoice for that a part of her care wasn’t so unhealthy, Johnson mentioned. The establishment’s monetary counselors provided a 75% low cost due to her strained funds and since her job didn’t supply medical health insurance on the time.
But emergency rooms are sometimes run by a wholly separate entity. In Nashville General’s case, the proprietor was an organization referred to as Southeastern Emergency Physicians. And that’s the title on a invoice that confirmed up in Johnson’s mailbox months later for $2,700.
“How in the world can I pay this company, when I couldn’t even pay for health care [insurance]?” Johnson requested.
Social employee Sonya Johnson acquired a civil warrant to look in courtroom when the corporate that runs Nashville General Hospital’s emergency room threatened to sue her over a $2,700 ER invoice — lengthy after she’d already negotiated a lowered cost schedule for the remainder of her hospital keep.
Johnson didn’t acknowledge the title of the doctor follow. A Google search didn’t assist a lot. There’s no explicit web site, although a list of webpages that do flip up in such a search suggests the corporate staffs a lot of emergency departments within the area.
Johnson mentioned she tried calling the quantity listed on her invoice to see if she might get the identical charity-care low cost the hospital gave her, however she might solely go away messages. And then got here a knock at her condo door over the summer time. It was a Davidson County sheriff’s deputy with a summons requiring Johnson to look in courtroom.
“It’s very scary,” she mentioned, and he or she recalled pondering “What have I done? And for a medical bill?”
Handoff Of Lawsuits?
Being sued over medical debt generally is a large deal as a result of it means a enterprise can get a court-ordered judgment to garnish sufferers’ wages, taking cash instantly from their paycheck. The technique is supposed to verify sufferers don’t blow off their medical money owed. But this isn’t good for the well being of people who find themselves uninsured, mentioned Bruce Naremore, chief monetary officer at Nashville General.
“When patients owe money, and they feel like they’re being dunned all the time, they don’t come back to the hospital to get what they might need,” he mentioned.
Under Naremore’s course previously few years, Nashville General had stopped suing sufferers for hospital charges. He mentioned it was hardly ever definitely worth the courtroom prices.
But Southeastern Emergency Physicians — which, since 2016, has been contracted by the hospital to run and employees its emergency division — went the opposite method, submitting extra lawsuits in opposition to sufferers than ever in 2019.
Naremore mentioned the choice on whether or not to sue over emergency care falls to the corporate that staffs the ER, not Nashville General Hospital.
“It’s a private entity that runs the emergency room, and it’s the cost of doing business,” he mentioned. “If I restrict them from collecting dollars, then my cost is going to very likely go up, or I’m going to have to find another provider to do it.”
This is a typical chorus, mentioned Robert Goff, a retired hospital govt and board member of RIP Medical Debt. The nonprofit helps sufferers trapped below a mountain of medical payments, that are the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy.
“So the hospital sits there and says, ‘Not my problem.’ That’s irresponsible in every sense of the word,” Goff mentioned.
The follow of suing sufferers isn’t new for Southeastern Emergency Physicians or its mum or dad firm, Knoxville, Tennessee-based WorkforceHealth. But such lawsuits have picked up lately, at the same time as the corporate has stopped its follow of balance-billing sufferers.
WorkforceHealth is likely one of the two dominant ER staffing companies within the nation, operating almost 1 in 10 emergency departments within the United States. And its technique of taking sufferers to courtroom ramped up after it was bought by the non-public fairness large Blackstone, in accordance with an investigation by the journalism undertaking MLK50 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Under stress from journalists, WorkforceHealth finally pledged to cease suing sufferers and to supply beneficiant reductions to uninsured sufferers.
Officials from WorkforceHealth declined WPLN’s request for an interview to reply questions on how widespread its follow of suing sufferers for ER medical doctors’ companies and charges has been.
“We will work with patients on a case by case basis to reach a resolution,” WorkforceHealth mentioned in an e-mail.
According to courtroom data obtained by WPLN, the agency filed about 700 lawsuits in opposition to sufferers in Nashville in 2019. That’s up from 120 in 2018 and simply seven in 2017. Its solely contract within the metropolis is with Nashville General’s ER, and the sufferers reached by WPLN mentioned they had been uninsured after they had been sued.
What’s shocking to Mandy Pellegrin, who has researched medical billing in Tennessee on the nonpartisan Sycamore Institute, is that it was all taking place at Nashville General — the place treating uninsured sufferers is a part of the hospital’s mission.
“It is curious that a company that works for a hospital like that might resort to those sorts of actions,” Pellegrin mentioned.
A Pledge To Drop Cases
As for Sonya Johnson — she ultimately went to courtroom and labored out a cost plan of $70 a month over three years.
And now WorkforceHealth tells WPLN that its intent is to drop pending circumstances.
“We will not file additional cases naming patients as defendants and will not seek further judgments,” a WorkforceHealth spokesperson mentioned in an emailed assertion. “Our intent is not to have these pending cases proceed. We’re working as expeditiously as possible on resolving individual outstanding cases.”
Johnson mentioned she has been advised that the lawsuit Southeastern Emergency Physicians filed in opposition to her will likely be dropped — however that she nonetheless owes the $2,700 invoice.
This story is a part of a reporting partnership that features WPLN, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
