MountainView Regional Medical Center sued over aggressive debt collections

This story has been updated to add comment from MountainView Regional Medical Center.

LAS CRUCES − When Alex Rougeux checked in to MountainView Regional Medical Center for surgery in September, she was surprised, but not shocked, to learn she owed money from a previous visit.

Rougeux, 23, a full-time student at New Mexico State University who earns a meager income from her job at a dog grooming business, has suffered overlapping chronic medical conditions for most of her life. In May, she visited MountainView's emergency room with abdominal pain. Since that visit, her insurance had changed: She had been enrolled in a previous employer's insurance plan but is currently covered by Medicaid.

Rougeux agreed to pay $100 against her outstanding balance that September morning and asked to set up a payment plan for the rest.

"They said they would send me something in the mail or someone would call me so that we could figure out like a payment plan and get that debt taken care of," she recalled.

The next communication she received from the hospital, she said, was a notice she was being taken to court for her unpaid bills.

"It really made me stress out about my finances," she said. Because Rougeux does not qualify for federal student loans, she is paying tuition on top of living expenses and the cost of prescription medications.

"I'm always worried about when something is going to come up, when I have to pay for something out of pocket," she said. "If I don't have the medication that I need to help me function, I can't focus on school. I can't even work. Sometimes I can't even get up out of bed."

As an indigent patient, Rougeux is eligible for protection under a 2021 New Mexico law shielding people with incomes less than two times the federal poverty level from debt collection action including lawsuits.

Yet the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty says MountainView has sued more than 200 low-income patients since the law took effect, without checking to see if they protected under the law as required.

The organization is leading a class action claim against the hospital and Faber and Brand, the Missouri-based legal firm that pursues debt collections for the hospital. Rougeux is among more than 200 unnamed plaintiffs in the class action.

"I understand that people are going to the hospital and they're getting care, and it needs to be paid for," she said, "but these people are humans. ... I didn't ask to be born with all these conditions. I don't deserve to be treated less because I make less money."

Plaintiffs claim hospital is ignoring law

In an unusual move, attorneys for Las Cruces patient Ruby Ramirez filed the class action as a counterclaim in a lawsuit the hospital filed against her in July, in the first class action seeking affirmative enforcement of New Mexico's Patients' Debt Collection Protection Act.

MountainView Regional Medical Center provided the following statement late Wednesday afternoon:

The hospital’s corporate owner, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, did not immediately respond to queries for this story; and neither did attorneys for Faber and Brand.

What is the law?Low-income New Mexicans may not know about law protecting them from medical bill collections

Ramirez explained in a statement that MountainView sued her for more than $6,000 after she was rushed to the hospital last year while she was pregnant. She says the hospital did not check her income before taking her to court and that she qualifies for protection under the act.

"My family is on a very tight budget," she said. "We can't afford this lawsuit."

Nicolas Cordova, a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Poverty and Law, said that since December, MountainView has pursued 260 new cases against patients, obtaining 40 default judgments and garnishing wages of 31 people.

"The hospital didn't do their homework before filing those motions," Cordova said. "They didn't do those attempts to contact a patient to verify whether or not they had a low income."

The countersuit also alleges the actions by the hospital and Faber and Brand are deceptive trade practices that violate New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act.

"When you go to the hospital, you shouldn't have to worry about being forced to go to court right after, but we know that hospitals, including and especially MountainView, are suing hundreds of patients every year," Cordova continued.

The class action asks Third District Judge Casey Fitch to declare the actions a violation of New Mexico statutes, and to halt collections activity until it confirms patients' income status. It seeks dismissal of all lawsuits and garnishment proceedings against patients who qualify under the law, restored wages for anyone whose pay was improperly garnished and deletion of negative credit reports about patients who should not have been sued. It also seeks damages for the plaintiffs, legal fees and court costs.

Community Health Systems operates a chain of hospitals across the United States including some in New Mexico.

One of its properties, Carlsbad Medical Center, was the subject of a New York Times investigation in 2019 that found the hospital had filed nearly 3,000 lawsuits over medical debt over four years. Lea Regional Medical Center in Hobbs and MountainView each had filed approximately 2,000 in the same time frame.

Others are reading:

• Gas pipelines, flares in New Mexico pollute air more than feds report, research shows

• FDA authorizes bivalent COVID-19 boosters for children ages 5 to 11

• Post-Roe, abortion is playing a central role in NM governor’s race

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: MountainView Regional Medical Center sued over debt collections