In response to the lawsuit, RCH shared a statement with Becker's Hospital Review saying it would "vigorously defend" itself from what it called an attempt from the union to "gain publicity." But even as Bull was helping send patients to Moberly Regional, the hospital was in the process of suing her and at least one other former employee at the nursing home. Largest U.S. hospital owner accused in lawsuit of endangering staff during coronavirus pandemic Published Fri, Aug 21 2020 1:15 PM EDT Updated Fri, Aug 21 2020 3:47 PM EDT Will Feuer @WillFOIA Hospitals owned by Community Health Systems, Inc., one of America's largest hospital chains, have filed at least 19,000 lawsuits against their patients over allegedly unpaid medical bills since March 2020, even as other hospitals around the country have moved to curtail similar lawsuits during the coronavirus pandemic, a CNN investigation found. The company said its hospitals do not "initiate litigation against any patient we know lost his or her job because of the pandemic," and that under a new policy it adopted earlier this year, it would withdraw lawsuits against anyone making less than 200% of the federal poverty level -- $25,760 for an individual. Two months after she wrote the letter, the court entered a judgment against her -- ordering her to pay the hospital her $781 debt and nearly doubling it by tacking on $400 in attorney's fees and $304 in court costs. He said the suit takes on even more importance because Congress is negotiating whether to give legal protection to employers, including hospital owners, to shield them against coronavirus-related workplace hazard complaints. Politicians have demanded a probe into outbreaks at the board’s hospitals, after 57 deaths related to outbreaks. "Most of the people being sued are exactly those people... it just rains economic havoc down on them.". Shands Lake Shore Regional Medical Center, which has served the small northern Florida community of Lake City since 1911, shut its doors as the number of patients declined over the years -- and as the pandemic put a financial strain on many small and rural hospitals. Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins University professor who has studied hospital lawsuits around the country, said CHS was far more litigious than most hospital groups, and that the company's financial aid policy didn't go nearly far enough. In its statement to CNN, CHS defended its collections practices. The only part of the hospital that seems to have continued operating: its collections operation. THE LARGER TREND "It's not keeping the lights on for the hospitals -- they don't need to be doing this," Walsh said. Rigorous Hand Hygiene Practices Among Health Care Workers Reduce Hospital-Associated Infections During the COVID-19 Pandemic J Prim Care Community Health . Once a court rules against a defendant, the hospital can move to put a lien on property they own, such as a house, or garnish part of their wages, depending on regulations that vary from state to state. Providing inpatient care for patients with COVID … The ambulance bay at the CHS-owned Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. No official data. A lawyer for the hospital told them how much they owed. But in November, he texted me: “I have a temp of 100.6 just now . The company's lawsuits against patients spiked after it sold: It sued more than 400 patients in October, by far the highest number of lawsuits it had filed in any month since at least January 2017. "Having this huge bill looming over my head -- it's been stressful, it's been heart-sickening.". Among the 11 definite or likely community-acquired cases, factors associated with late diagnosis (on or after hospital day 3) included delayed suspicion and testing for COVID-19 because symptoms at admission were attributed to an alternate cause (2 cases); initial negative RT-PCR test results followed by positive test results on serial samples from patients with high … "I can't afford $35,000 -- I don't even make that in a year.". Local lawyers file claims for bills, including an affidavit from a hospital custodian of records. Healthcare personnel should do all that is necessary to address the problem and prevent further spreading, such as rigorous compliance with all procedures for containing the spread. In Missouri, for example, CHS's three hospitals moved to garnish defendants' wages in more than half of the pandemic-era cases that resulted in a judgment. HOUSTON — A registered nurse who has worked for Houston Methodist for more than six years is planning to take the hospital to court. Most said they had tried to communicate with the company's lawyers, collections agents or the hospitals directly and found them unresponsive or unwilling to agree to a settlement they could afford. It also accuses management of pressuring staff to ignore safety precautions to meet quotas. The trust has already reported a number of serious incidents involving hospital-acquired covid. Late December, Smemthiewicz took an ambulance to the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19 and by January 2 was on a ventilator. The HAC Reduction Program encourages hospitals to improve patients’ safety and reduce the number of conditions people experience from their time in a hospital, such as pressure sores and hip fractures after surgery. Patients being sued and lawyers who work on the cases say that the company's rhetoric doesn't always hold up. Robin Bull, a part-time nurse, remembered an ambulance "coming and going constantly" on one especially scary morning, rushing residents to Moberly Regional Medical Center, the local hospital. Many garnishments were for people working at relatively low-wage employers -- the most common was Walmart. "I only bring home a check of 525 dollars a week and have [been] helping two daughters with my grandkids... my prayer to you is please relieve some of this debt and help out the average person.". "A son does all this research and the family gets together and the son convinces the ICU doctor to give her ivermectin," he said. Nationwide, roughly three-fourths of the company's hospitals have filed at least a dozen lawsuits against patients since March 2020. The company's six Alabama hospitals filed at least 4,900 lawsuits during all of 2020 and the first four months of 2021, but the state's court case search system does not make it possible to identify how many were filed after the pandemic gripped the U.S. or how many were debt-related. … The case, filed in the Riverside County Superior Court, is the first against a national health-care company, according to the Service Employees International Union, which initiated the suit on behalf of its 97,000 members. He tested positive for COVID-19 and died four days later. That strong financial result led to the company's top executives earning millions of dollars worth of bonuses, according to, One reason for the success: CHS has been buoyed by taxpayer support. "After conducting an investigation into Defendant's claims, Plaintiff believes there was an error in coding at the time of the procedure such that the Defendant should not be liable" for the payment, a lawyer for the hospital wrote in a filing in November, asking the court to throw the case out. Currently there are no official figures on numbers of patients contracting covid-19 in hospitals. Makary, the Johns Hopkins professor, said his research had found "a pattern across the U.S." that CHS hospitals are among the most litigious. Keith Birmingham | MediaNews Group | Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images, Former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb on how colleges can handle coronavirus outbreaks, similar suit filed by the New York State Nurses Association in April. Rashad Huntley, a maintenance worker and father of four young children in St. Petersburg, was sued by the CHS subsidiary that ran Bayfront hospital last month for $777.50 plus court costs -- the amount his insurance didn't cover after he received a half dozen stitches to a cut on his hand, Huntley said. After hospital reports no COVID cases, court documents and staff say otherwise. To identify cases, CNN searched court records for lawsuits brought by a list of about 100 CHS subsidiaries, including those operating the company's 84 current hospitals and others that ran more than a dozen facilities that CHS sold or closed during 2020 and early 2021. According to the hospital, she owed $1,642 for an X-ray she received after a car accident. Other cases see the hospital dismiss the lawsuit in exchange for defendants agreeing to a payment plan. The hospital and corporate parent "fell far short of the CDC recommendations," the suit says, adding that some hospital workers were "verbally abused" by supervisors for requesting masks and face shields. If you take my check from me, I would have no place to live.". "It felt like extortion," Alegria said. 5 million to resolve false claims allegations, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits … ", CHS, which is based in a Nashville suburb, is a for-profit company that was founded in 1985. The couple asked the hospital to let them pay $50 a month, but Matheson said they were told the minimum payment was $100 a month. "It's completely blind to the relentless, aggressive, predatory nature of debt collection on the ground. "Each of the individual Plaintiffs is a member of a racial minority group, making them statistically more likely to contract COVID-19, and more likely to suffer serious symptoms, including death.". At its peak in 2014, it operated more hospitals across the U.S. than any other company, according to Modern Healthcare, a trade publication. But Daniel Moore, a lawyer in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, who has defended dozens of low-income defendants sued by the CHS-owned Poplar Bluff Medical Center, laughed out loud when a reporter read him the company's claim that it doesn't try to collect from people who can't afford to pay. The hospital also failed to alert staff to possible Covid-19 exposures, the suit says. In its annual report, CHS acknowledged -- in legal speak -- that the pandemic is taking a toll on patients' ability to pay their hospital bills. Over a month after Valdivia initially tested positive for Covid-19 and was still experiencing symptoms, he was directed to return to work unless he tested positive for the virus again, the suit says. ", "No one takes the health and safety of our workers more seriously than we do, and since day one, our top priority has been to protect them— to keep them safe and keep them employed — so they can best care for our patients," a spokesman for the hospital said. CNN interviewed more than a dozen people sued by CHS hospitals. Instead of a legal motion questioning the charges, Turgeon sent the court a handwritten letter on a sheet of notebook paper asking the hospital to settle the case. Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program What is the Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program? "We've got car payments and rent and daycare fees, and still got to pay the lights and water. After Lake Norman Regional Medical Center sued Marianne Jurgens and her husband Robert for a $2,943 bill from Robert's 2018 stay at the Mooresville, North Carolina, hospital, a court entered a default judgment against the couple. Piper said in an interview that his bill came after the hospital kept him longer than he had wanted, and that he was supporting his daughter's family after she lost her job as a teacher due to Covid-19. Cuomo repeals nursing home and hospital COVID-19 liability protections. "It's like Marie Antoinette saying, 'if somebody came to me begging for food, I would give them cake,'" Makary said. CHS is hardly the only hospital group that has sued patients, but experts say its aggressive legal strategy stands out. In Scotland, up to four people died after a Covid-19 outbreak on a cancer ward at an Edinburgh hospital. At the rate they're paying now, it would take the couple 17 years to pay off the court judgment -- and that doesn't include the annual 8% interest that will continue to accrue. The review only included cases in which the hospitals sued individual people, as opposed to insurance companies. "That's total horseshit," Moore declared. McCullough and another defendant had trial dates set. Several months later, the hospital admitted it had made a mistake. "I am currently doing my best not to drown," the woman wrote. It also "led to the death of a worker from COVID-19, depriving her family of future economic and non-economic benefits.". Overall, Bayfront was among the most litigious hospital companies in the CHS network, filing more than 800 debt-related lawsuits since mid-March 2020. "The challenge often is that patients do not respond to the hospital's attempts to talk to them about their bills, so we do not know what impact, if any, the pandemic has had on a patients' ability to pay for medical care," CHS said. A suburban woman has received a controversial medicine that could save her life as she battles COVID-19, but it took a judge’s orders to make it happen. The four people in the suit include three hospital workers who were infected with Covid-19 and one whose mother, also an employee of the hospital, died of Covid-19. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2021 Feb 19. "Any suggestion otherwise ignores the extensive work, planning and training we have done to ensure the delivery of high quality care during this pandemic. After a judge ruled in the hospital's favor late last year, the company filed a motion to start garnishing part of her roughly $850-per-month salary. Huntley said he and his wife make less than $71,000 a year and have four kids, which would appear to qualify them for CHS' policy not to sue patients whose incomes are less than two times the poverty rate. The court system is anticipating a tsunami of COVID-19 related lawsuits in the coming year but how successful they will be is a great unknown. Bull's experience is hardly unique. Got a confidential news tip? Spokespeople for three other of the largest national hospital chains -- HCA Healthcare, LifePoint Health and CommonSpirit Health -- said their hospitals do not sue patients over unpaid bills. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. It adds that Valdivia got tested, worked one shift, and then received the second test results, which showed a positive reading. Orlando Health, the new owner, said in a statement that it has not sued any Bayfront patients over unpaid bills. Monique Hernandez registered nurse at Riverside community hospital is overcome with emotions during a memorial and candle light vigil for Hollywood Presbyterian Nurse Celia Marcos who died two days after testing positive for Coronavirus at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday, May 6, 2020. While the lawsuits were filed during the pandemic, they are typically over years-old medical bills. Some of the other former patients sued by Lake Norman said they had no way to afford a lawyer. Richard T. Ellison III, MD, reviewing Fakih MG et al. Most of the patients being sued by CHS who spoke to CNN said that they couldn't afford to pay what the hospital was asking for. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox. ", Labor secretary on unemployment numbers: We're still recovering. In New York, the state government. In another, a patient who had shared a bay with someone who developed covid then died from the disease. After being sued by Lake Granbury Medical Center, a CHS hospital outside of Fort Worth, Texas, Richard Piper wrote to a judge in August asking for relief from the $34,894 in medical debt the hospital was demanding. She said she also fell behind on medical bills from other health providers during her cancer "nightmare," but the CHS hospital was by the far the most aggressive in trying to collect, and the only one to sue her. The CDC has recorded over 139,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 640 deaths among healthcare personnel. "I tried to reason with the lawyers and tell them there's no way I can pay for this, but nothing worked," Bull said. "Even something as simple as taking our kids to eat at McDonald's, we can't do that anymore," she said. A judge dismissed the lawsuit. "Legal action is always the last resort," the company said. ... and their employees from coronavirus lawsuits. CHS said it could not comment on specific cases due to privacy regulations but that after reviewing the accounts of several patients who spoke to CNN, it is "satisfied that our hospitals followed their regular processes.". A group of health workers and their union sued the nation's largest hospital chain, accusing an HCA Healthcare medical center of recklessly endangering staff and patients by violating federal coronavirus guidance on protective equipment. Bull, who also receives disability payments, said she and her husband both contracted Covid-19 last summer, and they've struggled to pay their bills each month. The suit follows a similar suit filed by the New York State Nurses Association in April when hospitals across New York and especially New York City were overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients. In September, the hospital sued Jeffery Turgeon for $20,784, costs that his fiancée Jennifer Matheson said stemmed from a four-day stay in 2019 as he suffered from stomach pain. BayFront Health in St. Petersburg, Florida. But the flow of lawsuits from the CHS subsidiary -- which still describes itself in court documents as "doing business as Bayfront Health St. Petersburg" -- has continued, with new lawsuits filed as recently as last week. Hospital-acquired COVID-19 represents a serious public health issue, which is a problem that could create reluctance of patients to seek hospital treatment for fear of becoming infected. "Sometimes, legal action is the only path through which patients will engage in a conversation about the amount they owe for healthcare services that have already been received," it added. It says Valdivia tested positive for Covid-19 "hours after finishing this shift." In many cases, the defendants never respond to the complaint or hire a lawyer, and CHS files for a default judgment against the defendant, which they are typically granted. The hospital "failed to take reasonable and necessary precautions to protect their employees, patients, visitors, and the community from the harmful effects of COVID-19, thereby facilitating the spread of the virus and putting the surrounding community at an unnecessarily heightened risk of infection," the suit says. So she hired a lawyer who filed a motion to overturn the default. However, the Guardian newspaper reported that the proportion of covid-19 infections acquired in hospital was between 10% and 20%, although NHS sources told the paper that the figures were skewed by poor infection control procedures at one single trust … The extent of hospital-acquired, or ‘nosocomial’, Covid-19 infections and deaths in the pandemic’s first wave led to an HSIB investigation and … They're choosing between medical care and food.". She was diagnosed with breast cancer and received a double mastectomy at the CHS-owned Lake Norman Regional Medical Center in Mooresville -- and then a sheriff's deputy showed up on her doorstep last June to serve her with a $146,000 lawsuit from the hospital. COVID-19 Is Altering the Landscape of Hospital-Acquired Infections. Hospital management allegedly pressured one plaintiff, Ray Valdivia, into working despite exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms, the suit says. Fifteen families filed lawsuits against a New Mexico nursing home for COVID-19 deaths, saying the facility downplayed the severity of the virus. In 2020, the company's hospitals provided patients about $1 billion worth of "charity care," which is not paid for, it said. ELMHURST, Ill. — A DuPage County judge has ordered a hospital to allow a comatose COVID-19 patient access to a drug the FDA says could be unsafe, according to The Chicago Tribune. In some states, defendants' debts piled on with attorney's fees and interest. One CHS hospital closed completely last year. Matheson says she lost her hospice care job due to the pandemic, and that the couple is barely able to make ends meet with the new expense. Trinity Health, another large chain, suspended collections activity in March 2020 due to the pandemic and has "significantly limited any pursuit of legal action involving past due accounts," a spokesperson said, although she declined to provide more details. 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