By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times
Ileana Brenes had been feeling dizzy at the St. Petersburg nursing home where she worked. She was pale and tired all the time.
“My doctor called me with my blood results and told me to go to the hospital right away,” said Brenes, 54, a nursing assistant. She went to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, where doctors gave her a blood transfusion and prescribed medication to raise her iron levels.
At the time, in 2016, Brenes didn’t have insurance. So she met with an administrator at the hospital and filled out paperwork to get help with the cost. She said she knew Bayfront Health was a “safety net” hospital in the region, meaning doctors there would still treat her regardless of her ability to pay.
What she didn’t expect was the lawsuit Bayfront later filed against her for nearly $3,000, including court fees. “I think there was a miscommunication,” she said, “because I did everything they told me to, but still had to go to court.”
Brenes is one of hundreds of patients who have been sued by Bayfront Health St. Petersburg in recent years as the hospital evolved from a nonprofit institution to a for-profit arm of a national chain. The number of patients sued individually in Pinellas County civil and small claims court has risen from about 500 in 2015 to more than 730 so far this year, putting the hospital on pace to double that number by the end of 2019, a Tampa Bay Times analysis shows.
The increase represents a stark change from past practice. In 2012, when Bayfront was still a non-profit, the hospital filed hundreds of small claims cases against patients’ insurance companies, not the patients themselves. That continued in 2013 and 2014 as the hospital quickly changed hands to one corporate chain, then another.
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