How much to spend 24 hours on a gurney in Portsmouth hospital ER? $14,000, patient says

PORTSMOUTH — Mark Brighton recently received a bill for the more than 24 hours he spent on a gurney in a hospital emergency room hallway.

The bill totaled $14,692, according to Brighton.

“I was shocked,” Brighton said this week about the size of the bill, especially because he spent most of the time during his stay at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in a hallway, rather than a patient’s room.

Brighton was pleasantly surprised, however, by how relatively little he had to pay out of pocket.

“My portion is $111. I have Medicare and I have excellent supplemental Medicare coverage,” Brighton said. “I recommend everyone who’s on Medicare to make sure they get good supplemental coverage.”

Brighton, who gets his supplemental Medicare coverage through Aetna, says there’s “no doubt in my mind I would have been paying an 80/20 split without it.”

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Hospital responds to questions about billing

A Portsmouth Regional Hospital spokesperson said Brighton owes nothing to the hospital for his services there, not even $111.

Ellen Miller, the hospital’s senior director of marketing and communications, issued a general statement about hospital billing.

“The amount patients actually pay for hospital services has more to do with the type of insurance coverage they have than amounts on the chargemaster. Government programs like Medicare and Medicaid determine how much they reimburse hospitals, and insurance plans negotiate rates,” according to the statement.

“Uninsured patients are eligible for free care through our charity care program or they receive our uninsured discounts, which are similar to the discounts a private insurance plan gets,” the hospital's statement says. “In 2017, we expanded our discounts to help more patients, including those who are uninsured or underinsured, who may have trouble paying for hospital services by capping bills for eligible patients who earn up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.”

Previous story: Portsmouth man recounts 24 hours on emergency room gurney. Hospitals face high demand.

Brighton, who is a Type 1 diabetic, initially spoke out about his long stay in the emergency room hallway during an interview in March.

Brighton said “every inch of space” in the emergency room “had a gurney.”

“They called it a bed, but it was a gurney,” Brighton said in an interview and a narrative he shared with Seacoast Media Group about his experience at the time.

He ended up leaving with his wife after spending more than a day on the ER gurney.

“Oh my God, I can’t describe how frustrating it was,” Brighton said. “If someone had come and talked to me about what was going on, that would have helped. But that didn’t happen.”

Leaders at Portsmouth Regional Hospital and hospitals around the Seacoast and New Hampshire have previously acknowledged that patients have been dealing with long emergency room wait times.

Locally and nationally, hospitals have cited issues with staffing, patients ending up in the ER after having difficulty getting primary care appointments and numerous other factors creating a logjam.

Brighton’s experience began on Thursday, Feb. 16.

By Friday, Feb, 17, Brighton unhooked his monitors and checked himself out of the hospital, he said.

Miller issued a statement in March related to Brighton’s emergency room experience.

“We have been in touch with Mr. Brighton on his concerns and apologize to him for falling short of his expectations,” according to the statement.

“We understand that long waits in an emergency room, even when a patient has been initially evaluated and are in a bed, are frustrating as patients wait for answers,” hospital officials added in the statement.

The statement also pointed out “hospitals across the country are facing staffing shortages in all areas, and emergency departments and inpatient units are hit especially hard.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Patient: Portsmouth NH hospital bills $14K for 24 hours in ER hallway