South Florida judge tosses surprise emergency room fees lawsuit against HCA hospitals
Claims in a 2019 lawsuit that HCA Florida hospitals were billing patients surprise facility fees for emergency room visits were overblown and inaccurate, according to a South Florida federal judge.
The hospitals did in fact charge facility fees, U.S. Judge Roy K. Altman said in an order dismissing the lawsuit on Monday, but they were disclosed on the internet on lists known as chargemasters, which list the costs of various goods and services.
The proposed class action sought to represent anyone financially responsible for patients who were charged surprise extra fees at all HCA-affiliated emergency rooms in Florida in the last four years. The suit did not name HCA affiliates in Miami-Dade County, such as Mercy Hospital, Kendall Regional Medical Center and Aventura Hospital and Medical Center.
In the order, Altman found issues with each of the three plaintiffs’ claims of receiving emergency room fees. Timothy Shaw, who received care at Palms West Hospital in Palm Beach County, claimed he received a bill with an undisclosed facility fee of $1,642, but what he really received was an “itemization of hospital services” that didn’t reflect the amount he actually owed, Altman said.
“What’s more ... Palms West wrote off Shaw’s account on May 8, 2019 — one week before the complaint was filed,” Altman said in the order.
When hospitals “write off” account balances as bad debt, they no longer seek compensation from the patient.
Nathan Haviland, who claimed he was asked to pay an undisclosed fee of nearly $4,000 on a $23,865 bill at Poinciana Medical Center in Kissimmee, similarly misconstrued or misrepresented his itemized statement, the judge found. In Haviland’s case, the hospital was only seeking about $3,000, although that included “some percentage (however small)“ of the facility fee, Judge Altman said.
But Haviland’s claims were still unfounded, the judge said, because no hospital had tried to collect payment from him since November 2017. The hospitals also said that Haviland’s account was written off years ago, and that they would not be trying to collect the money or selling his account to a third party for collection, according to the judge’s order.
For the third plaintiff, Altman left open a slight possibility that he could file an amended complaint.
Keith OLeary asserted that his dependent child received emergency care at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center and was billed about $6,600 with a facility fee of an unstated amount. That wasn’t true, the judge said, but unlike Shaw and Haviland, who were written off by the hospitals as bad debt, OLeary actually did receive a bill. It was for $820.
But his claims were dismissed because they were “founded on allegations that are indisputably untrue,” Altman said.
Altman said he wasn’t persuaded by the HCA hospitals’ argument that their disclosure of the facility fee via a chargemaster could never be pursued as an unfair trade practice under Florida law. OLeary, he wrote in the order, could file a revised complaint by Feb 17.
Jared Lee, the attorney for the plaintiffs, did not return a request for comment on the order.
Similar claims were dismissed by a federal court in Orlando, the hospitals said in a statement relayed by their attorney, Walter J. Tache.
“We appreciate the work of both courts and continue to believe we have appropriately disclosed our charges and complied with the law,” the statement said.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 5:12 PM.
