Northwell Health Promises To Stop Suing Patients Over Unpaid Medical Bills During Pandemic

In a reversal, Northwell Health will hit pause on 2,500 lawsuits the hospital system filed against patients for unpaid medical bills last year, following negative media attention concerning Northwell's pursuit of legal action during a pandemic.

The New York Times reported that Northwell Health had sued hundreds of patients for an average of $1,700 in medical debt during the COVID-19 health emergency and economic fallout, when millions lost their jobs.

Northwell system's chief business strategy officer, Richard Miller, initially defended the lawsuits to the NY Times, telling a reporter, "We have no interest in pursing these cases legally. It’s not what we want to do. ... Unfortunately, in some cases, they’re not leaving us much of an option."

But after the Times published its story, the hospital system announced it would pause legal filings and rescind claims filed in 2020.

"Given the recent resurgence of COVID cases, Northwell has decided to extend the pause on legal filings and will rescind any legal claims that were filed in 2020," Northwell spokesperson Barbara Osborn said in a statement.

The nonprofit hospital system, with close ties between its CEO, Michael Dowling, and Governor Andrew Cuomo, said it paused all legal filings from April to September last year, except for one facility due to an unspecified "technical glitch," Osborn said. That issue is now being resolved.

But the vice president of health initiatives at the advocacy group Community Service Society, Elisabeth Benjamin, noted Northwell had filed hundreds of cases during that six-month period.

"There was no pause for them," Benjamin said.

Osborn did not answer questions about the glitch. She added the lawsuits referenced in the NY Times were for medical debt incurred before the COVID-19 pandemic and that Northwell only sues patients when they have been "unresponsive."

"In the rare instances (less than 0.1 percent of claims) that Northwell is compelled to take legal action, it is only when a patient has been unresponsive to multiple attempts to resolve the outstanding balance and if it is determined that the patient has a strong ability to pay," said Osborn.

During the pandemic, Attorney General Letitia James paused debt collection at state-run hospitals, and many private hospitals stopped filing claims during the pandemic, according to the NY Times. But not all hospitals paused collections. Fifty-five hospitals sued more than 4,000 New Yorkers for medical debt between March and November 2020, according to a report released by the Community Service Society, which works to shape policy to help low-income New Yorkers. Federal CARES Act dollars did not stop them either.

"In spite of the goal of offsetting hospitals’ losses during the pandemic, the allocation of CARES Act funds to New York’s private and voluntary hospitals appears to have had no impact on their medical debt collection practices during the pandemic," according to the report. "The 55 hospitals that are suing patients during the pandemic collectively received $2.5 billion in CARES ACT funds."

Northwell filed the most claims, some 1,420 between March 1st and November 18th, with 661 at its John T. Mather Memorial Hospital. Another 965 were across various individual hospitals, as well as 571 from St. Peter's Health Partners, and 196 from Mohawk Valley Health System.

The median amount that hospitals typically sue patients for is about $1,900, according to the non-profit's March 2020 report of more than 30,000 medical debt lawsuits from 2015 to 2019.

"It's not a lot of money for the hospitals," Benjamin said. "It's a huge amount of money for these patients because the patients are suffering."

A bill proposed in the state legislature last year would bar facility fees and reduce the interest rate in medical debt claims, which Benjamin says would bring reform to the medical debt system.

"I think the whole question is really ... why are charities suing people, their constituency in any way?" Benjamin said. "What public good is being served? You're just in engendering misery in people's lives."