Savannah Thompson walked into the emergency department at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, just after midnight June 14, fearing she had ingested fentanyl — a synthetic opiate responsible for a North America-wide epidemic of fatal overdoses — in what she had been told was cocaine, according to a new lawsuit accusing John Muir Health of fraud.
Medical staff evaluated Thompson, gave her the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, along with intravenous fluids and an electrocardiogram heart test, and took blood and urine samples before sending her home within three hours of her arrival, according to the suit. After she left, the hospital company screened her urine for drugs, as it routinely does with emergency room patients, the suit alleges. Then John Muir Health billed her $6,095.70 for the test, according to the suit, which is seeking class action status and accuses the hospital company of fraudulent billing practices and breaking California consumer-protection law.
The fee charged to Thompson, a Contra Costa County resident, was almost 100 times Medicare’s reimbursement rate of $62 for the test, the suit claims, adding that as a rule of thumb for medical billing, charging up to just under 1 1/2 times Medicare’s reimbursement amount is “considered reasonable.”
