Biddle vs. Warren General Hospital
Scott Bray
Rasmussen College

Author’s note: This assignment is being submitted by Scott Bray on 11/23/2012 for Medical Law and Ethics at Rasmussen College.

Biddle vs. Warren General Hospital In the year 1993 one of the involved parties got the idea that the firm he worked at of whom Warren General was a client could assist the hospital. This idea consisted of seeing whether or not an unpaid medical bill could be presented to social security. The main idea was for the hospital to save money by seeing if some of its patients might be covered under SSI. (Case Brief no author listed, n.d.). In the ideal situation the hospital would render services, the law firm would see if they qualified for SSI, if they did then they the hospital could receive money for the health services they rendered, rather than possibly having to write it off as a bad debt. The law firm would then get a fee from the hospital for rendering the service of having sorted through the bills and found people that would qualify. The law firm also might have been able to retain said individuals to help them individually process their SSI claims. 4 Pieces of information were needed to screen a patient for SSI. Their name, their number, age and medical condition were needed for the law firm to screen the hospitals clients for SSI. The absolute astounding fact in this case is that patients had neither consented to this information being released or authorized the hospital to release such information. The legal aide whose job it was to look through all this data also had very unethical behavior. She only leaked the information about what was going on when her job became in jeopardy. Only after an investigation was started by a local channel did the hospital and law firm dissolve their business ties. The idea of seeing whether people qualified for SSI is