UChicago Medicine Unlawfully Charges Emergency Care Patients Undisclosed Visitation Fees, Class Action Says

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A proposed class action alleges the University of Chicago Medicine and other UChicago-affiliated hospitals and emergency facilities unlawfully charge emergency care patients a hefty, undisclosed emergency room visitation fee.

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According to the 19-page case, UChicago Medicine has violated Illinois’ Fair Patient Billing Act by failing to inform emergency care patients of its intention to add a visitation fee on top of the billable charges for services provided, such as imaging or laboratory services, sterile supplies, drugs or procedures.

Although UChicago Medicine maintains a database of standard charges for each item of service or treatment provided during hospital visits on the “Price Transparency” page of its website, the health system’s online list fails to mention that it charges emergency care patients a visitation fee, the suit says. The plaintiff, an Illinois resident who has received treatment at UChicago Medicine’s emergency room 10 times within the past four years, says he was charged substantial visitation fees for each visit that were neither verbally disclosed to him nor posted on signage in the hospital’s emergency room before he received treatment.

The complaint claims that after UChicago Medicine surprises patients with a visitation fee, it fails to explain how it determined the amount. As the case tells it, the visitation fee is calculated after a patient is discharged based on an undisclosed process involving specific criteria categorized into five fixed levels.

The plaintiff claims that after his first seven visits to UChicago Medicine’s emergency room, his summary bills included visitation fees ranging from $159 to $738. The suit says that after his three most recent trips to the emergency room in June, July and October 2022, the plaintiff was billed once for a $4,670 visitation fee and twice for $4,810 visitation fees, “sizable and significant increase[s]” for reasons undisclosed.

The suit relays that the plaintiff was “shocked, dismayed, and aggrieved when he found out that he had been charged substantial, significantly increasing, and undisclosed Visitation Fees that he never agreed to pay.”

“Knowledge of Defendants’ intention to add a Visitation Fee for an emergency room visit, if known about prior to the charge being incurred, would be a substantial factor in a patient’s decision to remain at the hospital or seek less costly treatment elsewhere,” the lawsuit reads. “In making decisions regarding medical services, patients are owed, under the law, price transparency and informed consent.”

Per the suit, patients are not obligated to pay a visitation fee not described, mentioned, or agreed to before receiving services at an emergency room.

The lawsuit looks to cover anyone in Illinois who, during the applicable statute of limitations period, was a patient who received treatment at any of UChicago Medicine’s emergency room facilities located in Illinois and was charged an emergency room fee that was billed in addition to the charges for the individual items of treatment and services provided.

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