CHARLOTTE — A Rowan County woman says her doctor referred her to the Piedmont HealthCare Rheumotology clinic in Mooresville but she never made it out of the lobby.
“I really have never heard of such a thing,” she said.
She says she never received care because the receptionist wouldn’t let her see a doctor due to unpaid bills. She said she has been seen at Piedmont HealthCare regularly and was never told about an outstanding balance until the spring visit.
“I was embarrassed because there were patients sitting there and they were saying you can’t see the doctor,” she said.
After she was turned away, she went over here to the admin building in Statesville and asked what happened. They told her she owed a little more than $2,000 dating back to 2001.
Piedmont HealthCare would not comment specifically on her case but said in a statement they are allowed to do this.
“Private physician practices have the right to ask for payment of the patient’s responsibility for current charges and/or outstanding past due balances before scheduling additional care,” said Riley Antonek, spokesperson for Piedmont HealthCare.
Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, says this poses an interesting ethical question. His Boston-based think tank focuses on healthcare and affordability.
He says private physician practices, including Piedmont Healthcare, are small businesses and essentially for profit enterprises. But he says just because they can do this doesn’t mean it is right.
“You really would like to see in healthcare relationship based arrangements more than transactional arrangements,” he said. “So if somebody’s been your patient and they’ve been coming for a while and they can’t afford it, you’d expect, you’d want, and I think, whether it’s legal or not, from an ethical point of view, you’d want to work something out.”
No one tracks how often something like this happens but medical debt is common. The Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2024 that more than 1 million North Carolinians reported medical debt. That’s 13.4% of adults. In South Carolina, the number is slightly lower with 460,000 reporting medical debt. That’s 11.7% of adults in South Carolina.
“Physician practices, especially independent ones, have to be aware of the bottom line,” Dr. Saini said. “I think at the end of the day, there is a question, if you’re making money and you’re making a living, you know, how much is enough? At what point would you be willing to say, listen, we can cut you a break.”
This patient is contesting and questioning Piedmont HealthCare over her situation. She was able to be referred to a different doctor and is now receiving care
“I mean, I took it personally,” she said.
But she hopes the next patient won’t have to experience what she did.
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