About 43,000 former patients of Santa Clara Valley (Calif.) Healthcare will receive notices of possible billing corrections and refunds.
The outreach efforts are part of a settlement agreement over a lawsuit that alleged that Santa Clara County did not adequately inform three former patients about its previous hospital charity care and discount payments, according to an Aug. 14 news release from the county.
The three patients incurred between bills ranging from $8,000 to $35,000 between 2013 and 2017, according to the release. Those bills were sent to collections. At the time of their hospitalization, one patient was uninsured, a single mother of two children and a full-time student; another was uninsured and spoke primarily Spanish; and the third was unemployed and unhoused.
As part of the settlement, the county is providing an opportunity for patients whose bills were sent to collections between Oct. 28, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2021, to have their bills re-reviewed for full or partial discounts, according to the release.