Sarnia woman hit with unexpected bill for hospital stay

A Sarnia woman on the hook for a $700 hospital stay is looking for help.

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Mary LeBlanc said in March she spent three days in hospital in Sarnia for a kidney infection.

The type-2 diabetic said she’s been unable to see since earlier this year, and had no idea she was being admitted to a semi-private room.

She was admitted, after a CT scan, to start antibiotic treatment, she said, and suspected the room she was in, when she arrived, wasn’t a ward room because it was quiet.

Nobody was available at the hospital on a Saturday to run her insurance information, to find out if the semi-private room was covered, she said.

“I never thought of asking to move, to go to a ward,” she said. “I was pretty sick and in a lot of pain, so I wasn’t asking many questions at all.”

After getting her bill in May, she contacted Bluewater Health about waiving the charges, she said, but was told she had to provide financial details like her mortgage payments, her husband’s income, and information about their bills.

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LeBlanc said she received notice, after last year’s cyberattack at Bluewater Health, that her personal information was among the millions of records stolen.

“I’m not about to give them more information to get stolen,” she said.

LeBlanc, 63, said she doesn’t work or receive government supports.

She used to clean houses, she said, but hasn’t for “quite a while” to be home with her 23-year-old daughter, who has cerebral palsy.

Her husband, who works, and daughter visited her for short periods during her hospital stay, she said, but weren’t there when she signed a form for the room charges Monday.

Hospital officials “came up and said, ‘Here. you have to sign here,’” she said. “I was kind of worried. I had nobody with me to read it to me. I signed it and then I got a bill for $700.”

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LeBlanc said she’s tried contacting local support agencies for help but hasn’t gotten anywhere.

“Maybe somebody out there has an idea where I can go or what I can do,” she said, asking people to call her at 519-491-6980.

“They should have put me into the other kind of room where everyone is put in,” she said. “They didn’t.”

Bluewater Health’s chief financial officer and vice-president of corporate services Marlene Kerwin said officials can’t comment on individual patient cases for privacy reasons.

“If a patient requests accommodations in a semi-private or private room, there is a charge for these preferred accommodations,” she said in a statement.

She confirmed patients must sign off before room accommodation charges are applied at Bluewater Health, and said concerns raised with Bluewater Health’s patient experience office about room charges are “thoroughly reviewed” by hospital group finance officials.

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“We recognize that financial hardship can impact some patients, and in such cases Bluewater Health works with the patient to create a payment plan or potentially provide a reduction in charges,” Kerwin said in a statement.

“Additional financial documents are requested from the patient to … assess the patient’s eligibility for assistance. This information is handled with the utmost care and we take patient confidentiality very seriously.”

Since last October’s cyberattack, “Bluewater health has implemented enhanced security measures to protect patient information,” she said.

“We want to assure patients that we follow stringent protocols to protect their privacy and ensure the security of their personal information.”

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@tylerkula

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