MICHAEL PEREZ / Staff Photographer
Kevin McKenzie of Cherry Hill plays in a band and had no insurance at his day job as a dispatcher.
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Getting emergency care under a fake name
Kevin McKenzie, 27, had a runaway heartbeat but knew he didn’t have any insurance. At the hospital, he made up a name.
"So you don't have any identification on you?" the woman asked.
"No. I don't," he replied.
"It was weird," McKenzie said, "because they all knew I didn't have insurance, and I was giving them fake information."
"The only accurate info I gave was my girlfriend's phone number," he said. "Just in case something happened, they did have that."
He underwent tests. He said the only thing doctors pointed to was supraventricular tachycardia, a type of heart-rhythm disorder.
O'Brien, a Penn physician, said that when that happens, an electrical short-circuit in the atrium is sent to the ventricles, causing the extremely fast heart rate. The IV dose of Adenosine, O'Brien said, "allows the heart to reset."
McKenzie attributed the episode of tachycardia to exhaustion. "I'd been working full time, and going out at night, and drinking five or six cups of coffee a day."
O'Brien said "coffee can certainly do it."
After a few hours, McKenzie could leave, but first he had to sign forms. On each he had to write his fake last name, which began with the letter F.
"I couldn't even remember how to write a capital F in cursive," he recalled. "I'm trying to remember penmanship from elementary school. It was just so obvious I was making it up."
He said the medical staff was helpful and cared only about his condition, not his insurance.
As McKenzie left that morning, he looked for the ambulance crew that had brought him in, to thank them and buy them breakfast, but they were long gone.
When told this story and asked how often patients use fake names, Ken Braithwaite, executive director of the Delaware Valley Health Care Council, said, "I would say it is not prevalent, but it does happen on a routine basis."
He added that "it's a very sad reflection on our society that people feel that they would have to make up a name to go into the hospital." And he emphasized that the law requires emergency rooms to stabilize all comers in emergencies, regardless of their ability to pay.
Braithwaite, who is also senior vice president of the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania, said hospitals were willing to help uninsured patients get financial aid or work out payment arrangements.
Uncompensated care has skyrocketed in recent years, he said, climbing 15 percent in Southeastern Pennsylvania hospitals, from $224 million in 2006 to $258 million last year.
Asked about McKenzie's account, Daniel Williams, executive chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department, said he had never heard such a story and found it unlikely that Fire Department personnel would encourage fraud, even to save a life.
"We don't promote offering some type of deceit in order to get care," he said. "It's not a concern of ours whether you have insurance or not."
Three years later, McKenzie, who lives in Cherry Hill, is awaiting the release of his band's debut album. And he still feels uncomfortable with what happened.
"Whenever I do have a full-time job or I'm making money from this band," he said, "I'm going to pay back my debt somehow. It still bothers me."
