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Not the patient in question CarbonNYC via Flickr
Shock therapy
Hospital patient receives $44million bill... by mistake
Pneumonia sufferer Alexis Rodriguez said he “almost had an asthma attack” after opening the bill from a New York hospital.
PATIENTS’ HEART RATES have been tested by a computer error at a New York hospital – after several mistakenly received bills for tens of millions of dollars.
Unemployed doorman Alexis Rodriguez said his $44.8 million bill from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center nearly put him back in the facility.
He told the New York Daily News: “I almost had an asthma attack.”
Rodriguez said he was hospitalised last spring with pneumonia and was afraid the bill was legit.
But it turned out the company that prepares the bills had mistakenly put the invoice number in the space where the invoice amount should go.
The billing company is telling patients to ignore the multimillion-dollar bills. It says it will send out corrected ones.
The hospital didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment today – a public holiday in the US.
- Additional reporting by Michael Freeman
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