MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta mistakenly sent about 9,700 patient bills to a collections agency, according to centralmaine.com.
A MaineGeneral spokeswoman said a "technical error" led a file of bills for services provided at the hospital within the past year to be transferred to a collections agency. All of the bills were for $25 or less.
The collections agency recently sent letters to the patients informing them of the debt and how they could make payment, according to the report.
MaineGeneral Health CFO Terry Brann apologized Friday for the mistake.
"We have isolated the cause for the error and are implementing corrections to ensure this does not happen again in the future," he told centralmaine.com. "Patients' credit ratings are not impacted by this occurrence. We apologize for the confusion caused by these letters."
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