Victims of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs will not bear responsibility for their patient bills — Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth and Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health are assuming that cost, The Gazette reported June 5.
Following the Nov. 19 shooting at the LGBTQ nightclub, seven victims were transported to Centura Health's Penrose Hospital and 12 were transported to UCHealth's Memorial Hospital North and Memorial Hospital Central, all based in Colorado Springs.
Centura Health "removed any responsibility from the patients and wrote off the patient portion that was due" after insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid paid a portion, Andrew Gaasch, the system's executive vice president and CFO, told the newspaper.
"As a mission-based, not-for-profit health system, we really wanted to lift the burden of any remaining medical expenses for the care those patients received related to the horrific incident," Mr. Gaasch said.
UCHealth also put a hold on patient charges. Its billing customer service team "has been actively working with these patients, helping them through the process and reassuring them that they should not face any bills from UCHealth," Cary Vogrin, a spokesperson for the health system, told the newspaper.
Both health systems declined to place a dollar amount on how much was waived.
"This is a time of healing for them and not something we did for our own gain but something as a benefit to our patients," Lindsay Radford, a spokesperson for Centura Health, told the newspaper.