Some nursing homes nationwide have developed a strategy to collect debt by suing the families and friends of residents, Kaiser Health News reported July 28.
The strategy is rooted in admission paperwork, which often designates the signer as a "responsible party" for the nursing home to collect payments or enroll residents in Medicaid.
"The level of aggression that nursing homes are using to collect unpaid debt is severely increasing," Lisa Neeley, a Massachusetts elder law attorney, told Kaiser.
Twenty-four federally licensed nursing homes in Monroe County, N.Y., which contains the city of Rochester, filed 238 debt collection cases from 2018 to 2021 seeking nearly $7.6 million, with two-thirds of the cases targeting relatives or friends, Kaiser found