The Law: After Paying, Who Gets?

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Once they are ready to go home after a stay in the hospital, most people are too delighted—or intimidated—to question the bill. Even when it seems too big, they shut up and pay up. Not Mrs. Helen Clark, a lawyer who likes to get what she pays for. When Manhattan's Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals billed her $701.23 after eleven days of treatment for a blood clot in her leg, the figure struck her as high, and she asked for an itemized bill certified by a hospital official. Three years of legal hassles began.

The second bill was a tempting $20 lower, which only confirmed Mrs. Clark's suspicions that hospitals can err in their accounting. And now she spotted $45 for an X ray she had never received, plus $187 for tests identified vaguely as "pathological services." She objected again. And she asked for certified copies of all of the tests.

The third bill came to $656.23. The X ray had vanished, but an extra electrocardiogram at $20 had appeared, just as mysteriously. Lawyer Clark balked once more. She got a fourth bill for $636.23. But nothing was certified, and the hospital refused to give her the test results, offered only to send uncertified copies to her doctor. When Mrs. Clark demurred, the hospital sued.

Last week in Manhattan Civil Court, Judge Eugene McAuliffe sitting as special referee asked Defendant Clark, "What do you think you owe them?" She replied, "I owe $616.23 if they give me my records. If not, it's less than $400." The judge agreed: "I am of the opinion that when someone pays for something, he is entitled to it." The hospital's lawyers capitulated. She will get her records, they stipulated. "Hospitals have been getting away with too much," Mrs. Clark said firmly.