New Mexico hospital refuses to treat CANCER patients unless they pay thousands of dollars upfront for life-saving treatments
Cancer patients are among a growing number of sick people across the country who are being charged thousands of dollars for treatments they have not yet received.
Nancy Skinner, 68, and nearly a dozen other cancer patients in Las Cruces, New Mexico, who say they have been denied care or made to pay out of pocket up front, forcing them to look for money or move out of state move where affordable care is possible. is more accessible.
Ms. Skinner’s doctor ordered a biopsy in 2022 to evaluate a growth on her leg, but Memorial Medical Center denied her insurance and told her she had to pay $2,000 or she would not receive a potentially life-saving procedure. She had to take out a bank loan.
Meanwhile, Barbara Quarrell, 62, said that even though she had insurance, the hospital system had changed its policy to help cover the cost of cancer treatments in 2023 and would require her to pay out of pocket upfront.
Barbara Quarrell was denied insurance and denied life-saving treatment for her vaginal cancer. She had to travel hundreds of miles to get affordable care, but couldn’t afford the high costs out of pocket
Mrs. Quarrell (pictured right) worked as a nurse at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces for 29 years. When she gave the hospital’s finance office her insurance to pay for chemo and radiation, officials refused. She said, ‘They didn’t even try to make it work’
She ended up traveling about 200 miles to Albuquerque for her life-saving treatment: “They didn’t even try to take my insurance away at all.”
Apollo Global Management, a privately held company, acquired the nonprofit Memorial Medical Center in 2018 and became part of the profitable Lifepoint Health hospital chain.
Ms. Quarrell, who was a nurse at Memorial Medical Center for 29 years, believed the change was the beginning of the end for affordable care because for-profit organizations often impose higher costs on patients.
Ms Skinner said the hospital required her to pay the fee first before undergoing the procedure.
Once the results came in, she needed another scan. Again, the hospital said they wouldn’t schedule it until she paid another $1,600 out of pocket.
When she asked to set up a payment plan that would alleviate some of the financial burden, she was roundly rejected. A friend had to pay the bill.
A growing number of hospital systems in the US have begun requiring patients to pay in advance for surgeries and other services to avoid missed patient payments later on.
About 15 percent of U.S. households struggled to pay their medical bills in 2021, and that means hospitals aren’t getting paid.
The costs for hospitals to provide care are also increasing. Medicines administered in hospitals are becoming increasingly expensive. Hospitals issued $115 billion in drugs in 2023 alone.
And hospital labor costs increased by more than $42.5 billion between 2021 and 2023, reaching a total of $839 billion and nearly 60% of average hospital costs.
The huge increases that hospitals have to spend translate into a huge increase in the number of patients who have to pay.
In Las Cruces, Jose A Garcia said NBC News that he was forced to pay $7,000 by Memorial Medical Center last year before he could receive treatment for kidney cancer because he had no insurance.
And Cynthia Arreola, 41, had to pay her insurance premium upfront to have scans done before receiving treatment for her breast cancer.
Memorial Medical Center, a nonprofit organization, was acquired by Apollo Global Management in 2018 and became part of the Lifepoint Health hospital chain. Shortly thereafter, the policy changed allowing cancer patients to receive care regardless of their financial status
She said: ‘It came down to: ‘If you don’t have the money, you can’t get the scans or MRI.’
“My family had to help me raise that money and complete my testing so I could start my chemo.”
NBC News detailed the hospital system’s repeated denials of care, which appear to violate state law governing the land on which the hospital operates.
Yolanda Diaz, founder of the nonprofit CARE Las Cruces, said, “When a hospital denies and delays needed health care services, it harms the residents it is supposed to serve, creating an immediate danger to life and safety.”
Under state law, refusing care may violate the hospital’s lease agreement. State law also requires hospitals to accept “poor” patients seeking care they cannot pay for, including cancer care.
The hospital should discuss payment plans or cost-sharing arrangements with patients.
But in 2023, the hospital’s health care policy changed to exclude cancer care after city and county officials were verbally notified, even though the hospital’s lease agreement in the past required such notice to be in writing.
Memorial Chief Financial Officer Laura Thomas emphasized that Memorial does not turn away patients and said that “many of the claims made about Memorial’s practices, conduct and communications with patients are factually incorrect.”
At the same time, NBC News has provided the names of patients who say they encountered obstacles like Ms. Skinner’s and Ms. Quarrell’s, and several patients have since received an apology from hospital leadership (though no admission of wrongdoing).
Ms Thomas said of this apology: ‘If an individual’s conclusion from an interaction with us is that their care has been delayed or denied, we will do what we can to resolve that.’
Hospital leadership said they have always informed city and provincial governments of policy changes that would limit affordable health care, but the change to indigent care policy that was first discussed in 2016 did not appear in official reports until 2023 documents.
The Las Cruces City Council has said the hospital is violating the terms of its agreement with the government and has invited the CEO to council meetings over the years to get answers, but he never showed up.
Councilor Becky Corran said: ‘It’s a very clear sign that they don’t care about the community.’
Memorial, for its part, insisted to NBC News that it is not denying the concern.
According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Memorial charged nearly seven times more than what it costs to actually care for patients, double what nonprofit hospitals charge nationwide.
And Memorial is an outlier even among for-profit hospitals in the U.S., which typically charge less than five times the cost of care on average.
Memorial’s Medicare costs per beneficiary — the amount of money the hospital asks the government to reimburse — are higher than the national average and nearly 20 percent above the state average, meaning the hospital costs the government more money than other hospitals for a similar amount. or a lower level of care.
Ms Quarrell is among a number of affected patients who detailed their ordeal at a council meeting last year in an attempt to force hospital management into action.
Faced with a pile of bills while living in Albuquerque for a few months to undergo a long series of chemo and radiation treatments, Ms. Quarrell applied for Medicaid, the government insurance program for poor and disabled people.
“I have been able to complete all my treatments and I can say that I am a survivor, and it is not because of the health care system and my community,” she told the council.
She added, “I believe that after being a nurse for 29 years, I should not have to leave Las Cruces of Dona Ana County to receive my treatment. All hospitals are for-profit. I had no choice.
“If we had hospitals that weren’t private, not-for-profit, it would be different because they would have to accept you as a patient.”
But given the pace at which private companies are buying up hospitals—currently, nearly a quarter of New Mexico’s hospitals are owned by private equity firms—there is little indication that Memorial will reverse its policy change or that its hospital acquisitions will slow . .