Danbury Hospital is Connecticut's Most Litigious: Report

DANBURY, CT — A new analysis from a UConn Health researcher shows just how relentless Danbury Hospital has been in its pursuit of deadbeat patients.

In 2016, the latest year when complete data is available, nearly half of the 13,824 total medical debt cases filed in Connecticut originated in Danbury's collections department. That's a big jump up from 2015, when Danbury filed 39 percent of the total 11,747 cases.

The analysis is courtesy of Dr. Victor Villagra, the president of Health & Technology Vector, Inc., reporting in the Hartford Business Journal. The company’s mission is to "decrease, postpone, or eliminate the physical, emotional and financial burden of illness among all peoples," according to his website bio at UConn, where he is also the associate director of the UConn Health Disparities Institute. Villagra obtained the dataset from state Superior Court after filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

Danbury Hospital refers account balances of under $4,999 to a collection agency after issuing a final notice to the debtor, according to the Hartford Business Journal. Last year, the hospital recovered just over 23 percent of the dollar amounts it had passed on to a collection agency.

Connecticut hospitals and other healthcare providers had filed more than 85,000 collection lawsuits between 2011 and late 2016, according to a report published by Villagra in June. The plaintiffs claimed they were owed more than $110 million collectively over that 5-year period. Most of the outcomes rolled in the medical industry's favor.

Villagra delivered his latest findings this year to the High Deductible Health Plan Task Force, which was convened by the state legislature to study how medical insurance plans with high deductibles are affecting patients in Connecticut. These plans are popular with business HR departments as they reduce insurance premiums, but they can hit users hard when it comes time to actually paying for a medical procedure. These high deductible plans have become the norm in Connecticut, according to the Hartford Business Journal.