Attempts to Collect: A Quantitative Analysis of Medical Debt Lawsuits Filed in Thurston County in 2020

Abstract

Medical debt lawsuits against patients are a uniquely American problem. Many researchers have accessed court records of lawsuits to provide meaningful analysis on medical debt; some have used web scraping techniques to collect court data, while others have reviewed thousands of pages of paper documents. In this study, we use web scraping to download court documents. We developed a computer model with novel electronic recognition and parsing techniques to automate the process of extracting data from court records. This methodology expands the amount of data that can be reviewed in a given time. We provide descriptive statistics and an analysis of the medical debt lawsuits filed in Thurston County in 2020 by collections agency Dynamic Collections, inc. Our findings include: the average principal amount of suits was $1,173 while the average judgment (total) amount was $1,875, reflecting an average of $622 in court fees and interest added to each case. We found the highest proportion of cases in Thurston County are attributed to Tacoma Radiological Services, a third-party vendor that provides in-hospital diagnostic services via contracts with hospitals. We identified 32% of lawsuits originated with hospitals required to provide charity care. We found one Federally Qualified Health Center and three public hospital districts that sued Thurston County patients in 2020. We also found 16% of lawsuits originated from dental services.