High court rules against hospital

MAT-SU — The state’s highest court has denied Mat-Su Regional Medical Center’s attempt to recover fees for medical services rendered by intervening in a personal injury lawsuit.

The case began on July 6, 2007, when shortly after 5 p.m. on the Old Glenn Highway Anchorage resident Meg Voss, then 48, crossed the center line driving a 2002 Chevy Tracker and hit Brandi Burkhead, then 28, of Wasilla, who was driving a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am with a 4-year-old child on board.

Alaska State Troopers reported at the time that everyone in the collision went to the hospital with serious injuries. Both vehicles were totaled.

Burkhead’s medical bills totaled out at $301,863.59, according to a ruling Alaska Supreme Court Justice Robert Eastaugh wrote in a majority opinion filed Feb. 19. Burkhead signed papers giving the hospital the rights to personal injury claims she filed relating to her injuries against third parties.

But then Burkhead filed suit against Voss, at which point Mat-Su Regional tried to jump on board as a co-plaintiff in the suit.

“Both Burkhead and Voss objected to Mat-Su’s motion to intervene. Superior Court Judge Vanessa White denied Mat-Su’s motion in January 2008,” Eastaugh wrote.

But Mat-Su Regional wasn’t done quite yet. A month prior to White’s ruling the hospital filed its own suit against Voss.

Voss’ attorneys argued that Mat-Su Regional’s only valid means to get its money was to put a lien on Burkhead. A second Palmer judge, Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen, agreed and threw out the hospital’s lawsuit.

The hospital appealed both decisions to the Supreme Court.

Burkhead’s attorneys argued that the Legislature set up a “careful tripartite balance” between patients, health-care providers and insurers. To let the hospital intervene in its patients’ suits and sue at fault parties in car wrecks would “eviscerate” that balance, Eastaugh wrote, summarizing the attorneys’ arguments.

Which, Eastaugh wrote, doesn’t mean the hospital can’t sue. Once it has a lien in place it can sue to recover that money.

Eastaugh points out that workers’ compensation claims allow employers to intervene in suits and the Department of Health and Social Services can sue for damages on behalf of Medicaid recipients.

“The Legislature could have adopted a similar remedy for health-care providers but opted instead for the lien scheme,” he writes.

In short, Eastaugh wrote, a person can’t assign his or her right to a personal injury claim to a health-care provider.

“We think the assignment of personal injury claims is socially problematic given the potential for overreaching when injured assignees bargain away some or all of their rights under the equivalent of at least economic, if not physical or mental, duress,” he wrote.

A rule allowing health-care providers to take over personal injury claims, he wrote, would have to come from the Legislature, not the court.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.