Hospitals in Wisconsin Pursued Medical Debt Collection Widely but Unevenly, Study Finds

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Some hospitals in Wisconsin were more likely than others to sue over unpaid medical bills, and low-income and Black people were disproportionately sued, a new study finds.

, since many hospitals charge the most to patients without insurance, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of previously confidential hospital prices.. They set criteria for who gets free care, and they can write off bills for low-income patients.

The nonprofit hospital sector continues to face scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators over whether facilities are doing enough to help low-income patients and stay exempt from taxes. The latest study examined 143,049 lawsuits between 2001 and 2018 in an analysis of 125 nonprofit hospitals in Wisconsin.

The six most litigious hospitals accounted for 25% of the lawsuits, according to the study, which ranked hospitals by the total number of lawsuits without factoring in the size of the hospital.Hospitals were suing people more for unpaid bills, the study also found. The rate increased to 1.53 lawsuits for every 1,000 residents in 2018, up from 1.12 lawsuits per 1,000 residents in 2001.

The study didn’t say whether the people sued by hospitals had health insurance or not, because court records didn’t contain that information, though other research has shown the uninsured are more likely to have medical debt. Under the analysis, hospitals in the state brought 1.86 lawsuits against Black patients per 1,000 Black residents, compared with 1.32 cases against white patients per 1,000 white residents.

 

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