Catholic Healthcare West Settles Lawsuit

By DAVID KRAVETS

SAN FRANCISCO – A health care provider with hospitals in three Western states agreed Wednesday to reimburse as many as 800,000 uninsured patients for excessive charges to settle a class-action price-gouging lawsuit.

The suit claimed San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, which has 40 hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona, routinely charged uninsured patients up to five times the amount paid by private insurers and government programs for the same services.

“It’s clearly in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” plaintiffs’ attorney Kelly Dermody said.

Lawyers said the deal, which covers overcharges since 2001, also allows patients to be compensated in medical care.

Another plaintiffs’ attorney, Sid Backstrom, said the case is one of 50 he’s litigating in which hospital groups are accused of charging uninsured patients their maximum rates. The hospitals charged no other patients the maximum.

He noted that private insurers and government insurance programs negotiated lower rates for large groups of people that were unavailable to the uninsured.

“The uninsured people got forgotten and left behind,” he said. “I don’t think it was a deliberate act to charge them more than anybody else.”

Catholic Healthcare West spokeswoman Tricia Griffin said the company altered its billing methods in 2004 and agreed as part of the settlement never to overcharge the uninsured.

“We settled the suit to put this matter behind us, avoid the cost of litigation and focus our resources on caring for patients,” Griffin said.

One of the original patients in the lawsuit said an ambulance took her to a Healthcare West hospital in Los Angeles for treatment of severe abdominal pain. She stayed at the hospital for two days, had X-rays and was diagnosed with gastritis. A few weeks later, she said, she received a bill for $20,296.

A San Francisco County trial judge is expected to approve the settlement next month.