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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeNewsLocal newsBill Would Give V.I. Hospitals Liens for Accidents

Bill Would Give V.I. Hospitals Liens for Accidents

Sen. Nereida Rivera-O'Reilly. (File photo by Barry Leerdam, V.I. Legislature)
Sen. Nereida Rivera-O’Reilly. (File photo by Barry Leerdam, V.I. Legislature)

The territory’s hospitals will have a presumption of a lien on any revenues from lawsuits or insurance settlements for unpaid care for patients treated after accidents, if legislation approved in committee Friday becomes law.

Sen. Nereida Rivera-O’Reilly (D-STX), the bill’s sponsor, said a local attorney approached her, saying sometimes individuals get care at either of the V.I. hospitals after an accident and may not have insurance. They then file suit against some entity, such as a driver and are successful and receive a settlement, she said.

“In that case, oftentimes the attorneys do not necessarily include, as they pay expenses, the expenses of the hospitals. … Some lawyers do but there are others that do not,” O’Reilly said.

Schneider Regional Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Dr. Bernard Wheatley testified in support of the bill, saying it could help bring in badly needed revenue owed the hospital.

“This change in the law would allow our hospitals to recoup some of the money they expend in treating patients that the hospitals might otherwise not recoup,” Wheatley said.

According to Wheatley, in 2016 Schneider Regional treated more than 400 patients who were accident victims. Some of those patients were very severely injured and required surgery and inpatient stays. Charges on those cases have exceeded $179,000, he said.

“We have a very large self-pay and uninsured population. In many instances, the hospital is unable to collect any money for providing this care,” he said.

Sen. Novelle Francis (D-STX) asked how much the hospital spends on care that is not paid for. Wheatley said the hospital has more than $10 million per year in unpaid for care for people without insurance.

Wheatley asked for the bill to be amended to loosen filing requirements and deadlines for sending notice to parties that may be subject to the lien.

Kansas had a similar requirement but relaxed it in 2014, after a hospital spent $83,000 to treat an accident victim and the Kansas Supreme Court deemed a lien invalid due to not providing notice to the liable party in time.

“Making this change to the proposed legislation will make it easier for our hospitals to enforce the lien,” he said.

Voting to send the measure out of the Health, Hospitals and Human Services Committee were O’Reilly, Francis, Sens. Marvin Blyden (D-STT). Dwayne DeGraff (I-STT) and Sammuel Sanes (D-STX). Sens. Kurt Vialet (D-STX) and Janette Millin Young (D-STT) were absent.

Senators also sent on a measure from O’Reilly amending the way “behavioral therapy” is defined in V.I. law so that students with Autism Spectrum Disorder can get behavioral therapy while in the public schools for a longer period of time. Under current law, students age 13 to 16 can get this care, while under the proposed changes they can get it up through age 21. It also limits the yearly insurance benefit for this service to $25,000.

There are roughly 473 special education students in the St. Thomas-St. John District and 574 in the St. Croix District totaling 1,047 children in all, according to the Department of Education.

Health Department and Education Department officials testified in support of the idea, saying it would allow them to use federal special education grant funding to help more students. Education officials recommended raising the age to 26 to take advantage of the fact that current federal law allows children to be on their parents’ insurance until that age.

Dr. Nicole Craigwell-Syms, deputy commissioner for public health services at the Health Department, urged some changes.

“Without an analysis by the Government Employee Service Commission regarding the potential financial impact to overall government of the Virgin Islands health insurance costs, the Department of Health supports the intent and recommend that an analysis is done prior to putting the legislation to a vote,” Craigwell-Syms said.

Keeping students at home is better and more cost effective than sending them to off-island facilities, they said.

O’Reilly objected to waiting on a fiscal analysis, saying the measure will both save money and help families.

“We pay $75,000 per person per year for each resident at the Devereux facility in Florida. There are six in one facility. That’s $450,000. There are 26 in Texas. That’s $1.9 million and that does not include medical services,” she said.

“Four siblings are in one of those facilities. One, nobody knows where he is; father in jail, mother disability. No one knows what happened to her. One of those siblings is in a different facility and two are in the same facility but not in the same structure. Those children could have been saved. They could have had a close to normal life had we paid attention to them and we didn’t. And I’ll be darned if I’m going to just sit here and let fiscal impact analysis get in the way of us doing the right thing at the right time for the right people,” she said.

Department of Education Legal Counsel Alvincent Hutson suggested that behavioral therapeutic services should extend to age 26 because students are covered under their parent’s insurance plan until that age. Lawmakers stated that the bill would be amended for that purpose. Officials also recommended expanding behavioral services to other conditions aside from autism spectrum disorder.

Voting to send the measure out to the Rules and Judiciary Committee were: O’Reilly, Francis, Sens. Marvin Blyden (D-STT) Janette Millin Young (D-STT) and Sammuel Sanes (D-STX). Sens. Kurt Vialet (D-STX) and Dwayne DeGraff (I-STT) were absent.

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