Modern Healthcare May 25, 2019
A small number of states recently enacted laws precluding hospitals from filing liens before billing patients’ commercial health insurers.
South Dakota’s governor signed the latest one just a few months ago. Had it been in effect in 2015, it would have prevented Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls from filing roughly $142,000 in liens on Marlyn and Kathlene Bootsma’s injury settlement from a motorcycle accident, which the parties are still battling in court.
Sioux Falls-based Sanford Health always bills health insurance before filing liens, so the new law won’t change its practices, said Torrey Sundall, Sanford’s senior director of payer contracting. The health system used to file liens first, but made a “business decision”...