DENVER — As the Colorado’s largest and most prominent medical provider insisted it was “not hiding anything,” an exhaustive investigation discovered UCHealth, for years, used what amounted to a loophole in the state’s court system to keep private its aggressive bill collection practices.
The decision allowed UCHealth to continue to sue patients – roughly eight per day for years – with virtually no way to track its legal efforts. This investigation technically began in late 2019 and early 2020 when investigative reporter Chris Vanderveen, acting on a tip, began searching state court records looking to quantify the number of lawsuits filed by the state’s largest medical systems. At the time, he discovered UCHealth appeared to file more lawsuits than any other system.
It appeared, at least on the surface, UCHealth had largely ended its litigation practices. A few hundred lawsuits filed every month in 2019 had turned into one or two, at most, in 2020. “I really do think we owe you a little bit of thanks – maybe a lot of thanks and gratitude – for sure, because it pointed us in the right direction,” said state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, one of the main sponsors of HB-1380.
And that left thousands of its patients vulnerable to litigation they were ill equipped or ill prepared to experience. The investigation found numerous examples of that.
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