DENVER — There’s a renewed effort to change the way Colorado hospital systems sue patients for unpaid medical bills following an investigation by the Colorado Sun and 9NEWS that exposed some of the billing practices of the largest provider of care in the state.
The move, pushed by the Colorado Attorney General, would compel hospital systems to use their own name as the plaintiff should they elect to sue patients. House Bill 1380 is set to go in front of the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on April 10.
In February, a joint investigation by the Colorado Sun and 9NEWS in partnership with the Colorado News Collaborative and KFF Health News found UCHealth sued more than 15,000 patients between 2019 and 2023. Since 2020, the Colorado medical giant has almost exclusively sued patients under the name of a third-party debt collector.
RELATED: UCHealth sues thousands of patients every year. But you won’t find its name on the lawsuits.
A sample analysis of the debt found the average amount owed was a little more than $3,000.
By suing under the name of a third-party debt collector, UCHealth – and other hospital systems – largely escaped a more thorough review of their litigation practices.
UCHealth’s Chief Legal Officer told 9NEWS in February the hospital system wasn’t trying to hide anything.
“We’re not hiding from anything,” Jacki Cooper Melmed said. “There’s no mystery what’s going on here.”
But legislators aren’t completely convinced that’s the case.
“I think it’s a complete lack of transparency, and if you have nothing to hide then why wouldn’t you be more transparent?” said state Sen. Lisa Cutter (D-Jefferson County).
Last year, Sens. Cutter and Sonya Jaquez Lewis (D-Boulder) sponsored a far-reaching medical debt reform bill that, among other things, would have required hospital systems to list themselves as the named plaintiff in debt collection litigation.
It would have made it possible for the public to know just how often hospitals sue patients.
“We don’t know how much it’s happening in this state,” Jaquez Lewis said. “We would love to know how many times hospitals are suing patients. What’s the volume? What are they suing them for? We would love to have that kind of information.”
During the course of an initial committee hearing for Senate Bill 93, a large group of attorneys representing debt collection companies protested the provision to require hospitals to sue under their own names. The criticism largely centered on the idea that people seeking medical care for cancer, for example, would not like the cancer treatment center to be publicly listed as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against them.
In the end, the criticism worked, as the requirement to compel hospitals to be listed as plaintiffs was dropped.
If you have a medical bill you'd like us to know about, please email us at showusyourbills@9news.com
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