Yale Law Students Pursuing Legal Action Against Yale-New Haven for Billing Practices

The Wall Street Journal on Friday examined actions taken by students at Yale Law School's legal clinic on behalf of patients who have "tangled" with Yale-New Haven Hospital's "aggressive debt-collection tactics." The hospital, the teaching facility for Yale's School of Medicine, "has been one of the prime focuses of a national outcry over hospital billing practices," the Journal reports (Lagnado, Wall Street Journal, 11/14). The Journal previously had reported on the case of Quinton White, an uninsured man struggling to pay about $40,000 in medical bills that accumulated from his now-deceased wife's cancer treatments. After the Journal's report, the hospital agreed to forgive White's debt and to investigate other cases of debt collection (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 4/1). However, the hospital's recent actions have not prevented the law students from seeking further action and threatening to file a class-action lawsuit against the facility, contending that it "failed to inform low-income patients" about the availability of a "free bed" fund at Yale-New Haven. That fund is made up of a pool of money donated to help indigent patients receive medical care; internal guidelines and state statutes say that people with annual incomes up to 250% of the federal poverty level can apply for assistance through the fund. The Journal reports that the fund had a value of about $37 million in 2001, but that figure decreased to about $24 million because of market declines.

Students' Allegations
In an Oct. 17 48-page memo to the hospital, the students say that the number of patients who applied for and received help through the free bed fund is "far lower than it should have been," according to the Journal. Further, they cite the cases of 17 people who allegedly had been mistreated by collection lawyers from the hospital. The students propose that the hospital cease legal proceedings against low-income patients whom they say should be receiving free care and return money to people who were "unfairly pressured in the past" to pay their medical debts to the hospital, the Journal reports. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) also has filed a lawsuit against the hospital and is investigating its use of the free bed fund, according to the Journal. Hospital spokesperson Katherine Krauss said that hospital cannot comment on the details of the memo from the students or the potential legal action they might bring against Yale-New Haven. She added, "I think we are probably better than a lot of hospitals, but we have become the poster child on billing and collection." Yale-New Haven Hospital Senior Vice President William Gedge said that the hospital has new policies regarding billing and collection, including barring collectors from seeking to foreclose on homes and requiring approval before collectors put liens on homes (Wall Street Journal, 11/14).