The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Danbury Hospital tops in lawsuits
Hospital sued 6,400 patients in small claims court in 2016 — nearly half of all suits Connecticut hospitals filed to recover unpaid bills
DANBURY — Danbury Hospital sues more patients in small claims court to collect unpaid medical bills than any hospital in Connecticut, new data shows.
In what may be Connecticut’s part in a national wave of hospitals becoming America’s most aggressive debt collectors, Danbury Hospital sued 6,400 patients in small claims court in 2016 — a figure that was nearly half of all lawsuits Connecticut hospitals filed to recover unpaid bills, according to a study from UConn’s Health Disparity Institute.
Danbury Hospital’s lawsuits clawed in about $9 million in awards that year.
“It’s really distressing to see one hospital sticking out like a sore thumb,” said Jill Zorn, senior policy officer for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, a charitable organization that focuses on advocacy.
“These hospitals are supposed to be nonprofit, and while they have to stay afloat, this doesn’t seem like the right course to take.”
In a singleday snapshot in 2017, Danbury had 600 active small claims cases against patients, compared to the nexthighest total of 82 at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford.
The rest of Connecticut’s 26 hospitals each had several dozen to no active lawsuits, the data shows.
Health leaders say it won’t be clear why Danbury is such an outlier until they investigate. But one thing is certain: the
rising cost of health care and the higher deductibles insurers are requiring from patients means hospitals nationwide are turning to legal action.
No hospital in Connecticut knows that better than Yale New Haven, which made headlines in 2003, when it was accused in a lawsuit by thenAttorney General Richard Blumenthal of denying needy patients aid from an ample $37 million free bed fund, and subjecting patients to ‘aggressive debtcollection practices.’
Later that year, patients in a $100 million class action lawsuit said Yale New Haven illegally denied them free medical care, overcharged for services, and threatened them with home foreclosure.
“We have not brought anyone to court in years,” said Patrick McCabe, senior vice president of finance at Yale New Haven Health, and a member of a state task force where the data about Danbury was shared earlier this month “We would rather spend more time working with patients to come up with ways to pay that they can live with than taking extraordinary steps — and I would consider any suit, even in small claims court, to be an extraordinary step.”
Most hospitals in Connecticut seem to agree.
Griffin Hospital in Derby and Milford Hospital each had less than 50 active small claims cases in May 2017, according to the Health Disparities Institute. Norwalk, Bridgeport Greenwich and Stamford hospitals each had cases in the single digits.
The next step
State Rep. Bill Petit, a ranking Republican member of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Public Health Committee, said he didn’t understand why Danbury Hospital was an anomaly.
“You have to assume there is a different policy in Danbury, because it’s hard to believe that Waterbury and New Haven and Hartford are any different than Danbury in terms of patient population,” Petit said. “So my first question to ask is whether Danbury’s policy is different.” The state’s top health advocate agreed. “The Office of Health Advocate has not (yet) been able to follow up in any way with Danbury Hospital on this issue,” said Health Care Advocate Ted Doolittle. “I am not sure we have an understanding of what has created this outlier data.”
For now, Danbury Hospital is saying little about its aggressive debt collection practice, except that it is reviewing the data and its own policy.
A spokeswoman said the hospital provided $13 million in free care in 2018, and that only 0.2 percent of the hospital’s “hundreds of thousands of encounters” last year ended in court filings.
“However, we realize (litigation) can be overwhelming for some,” said Andrea Rynn, director of public and government relations for Nuvance, a newly formed health network stretching from the Sound Shore to New York’s Hudson River. “And so we are currently reviewing both the report and the policy.”
News that Danbury is Connecticut’s most litigious hospital comes at a turning point for its parent network Nuvance, which includes hospitals in Norwalk, New Milford, and Sharon, as well as New York hospitals in Carmel, Rhinebeck and Poughkeepsie.
A recent report by the state Office of Health Strategy showed that the parent company of Danbury, New Milford and Norwalk hospitals lost $13 million in 2018, a few months before it announced its merger with New Yorkbased Healthquest to form Nuvance.
Federal and state agencies approved the $2.4 billion Nuvance medical system in May, which serves 1.5 million patients with 12,000 employees and 2,600 physicians.
Looking ahead
Danbury tries to accommodate patients who cannot pay their health care bills, Rynn said.
Patients who are poor can qualify for free care, she said. Patients with limited means have options to pay what they can on a sliding scale, Rynn added.
A look at the publicly available small claims cases that Danbury Hospital has made against its patients over the last decade shows hundreds and hundreds of stories of people having their wages garnished and being ordered to make regular payments — often of $35 per week, to satisfy their hospital debts.
Dr. Victor Villagra, associate director of UConn’s Health Disparity Institute, who collected the data about Danbury, told Hearst Connecticut Media he is doing followup research on the years 2017 and 2018.
He said he is particularly concerned about what happens to the quality of