< Previous page

Hospitals settle the balance -- which can top $1,000 -- with the victims. Sometimes, hospitals forgive the debt. Other times, they work out a payment plan.

'Where do you stop?'

"The bottom line is these services cost money," said Rebecca Andrews, WakeMed Hospital's vice president of finance. "We do sometimes forgive. It's case by case. But where do you stop? We treat gunshot wounds, stabbings, abused children. No one asked for that to happen."

In January, Central Carolina Hospital put the Chatham County woman they treated on a payment plan to settle her $175 bill. She feared the hospital would turn over her bill to a collector and her credit would be ruined. Each month, she shells out $44 of her unemployment check to make good on her debt. She hadn't begun to deal with the new $193 bill.

Each month, she is reminded of the invasive and embarrassing exam. After the attack, she had already felt her life unravel.

She said she lost her retail job after she left shifts, embarrassed, thinking customers could tell she'd been raped. She said she dropped out of a few of her classes at a local community college because she couldn't concentrate. She was scared to go anywhere alone. Police didn't charge the man she said raped her. She said he told police it was consensual sex. Investigators told her they didn't want to pursue a "he said/she said" case, she said.

She said this week she regretted going to the hospital for an exam.

"The rape was tough enough," she said. "I believed I was doing the right thing, not just for myself. Now, I've got these bills hanging over my head."

On Tuesday afternoon, after learning of her case, administrators at Central Carolina Hospital decided to forgive her bill.

"Our CEO was shocked," said Danyl Butler, the hospital's director of business development. "It simply slipped by us. We didn't know this was happening."

< Previous page