Hospital-bill hell bedevils disabled man

A few mixed-up numbers, hidden somewhere in a matrix of medical records, keep Joseph Sansone awake at night in his South Philly home.

Sansone, 63, recently retired from the school district to help his wife care for his 39-year-old son, Michael Sansone, who is "profoundly disabled" due to an incurable hereditary disease. Sansone worries about dying, afraid he'll leave his son behind, incapable of dealing with the years of medical billing errors and red tape that he claims Thomas Jefferson University Hospital has acknowledged, but never fully ironed out.

"In the end, I'm always worrying about his future," Sansone said one recent afternoon. "It's not my life I worry about, it's his. It's the saddest thing I've ever had to deal with."

Michael Sansone, a former plumber with the school district, began showing symptoms of his disease about a decade ago.

In January 2005, he was admitted into Jefferson for the first time.

Another man in Philadelphia named Michael Sansone had a similar Social Security number and birthday. That man had a long criminal record and a history of drug abuse, Sansone's attorney said, and accumulated over $100,000 in treatment during multiple visits to Jefferson before he died.

Joseph Sansone knows all this because he started getting Medicare invoices for the other Michael Sansone at his home on Rosewood Street in 2007. Joseph Sansone called Jefferson, he claims, figuring it would be an easy fix.

"I told them, 'It's not my son, there's some type of mistake,' " he said.

Jefferson, according to Sansone, said that it appeared to be a case of identity theft. So he called police and reported it. They later told him it was a billing mistake, not identity theft.

Still, Sansone contacted his son's bank, credit bureaus and the Federal Trade Commission just to be sure. Fearful that his son's Medicare benefits could be exhausted or that medical histories could intertwine, he contacted the fraud hot line and was directed to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. None of the agencies helped, he said.

"What if his son was rushed to the hospital?" asked Sansone's attorney, Andrew Smith. "You don't know what medications this other guy might have been allergic to. That could affect his life."

In March 2007, Sansone's son got a letter from Jefferson asking him to pick up the personal belongings he had left there. That letter prompted Joseph Sansone to take off work and go to Jefferson. He spoke with Stacey Meadows, general counsel for Jefferson, who he claims assured him that the bills would be corrected.

Meadows referred a request for comment to Jefferson's public-affairs office. A spokeswoman declined to comment, citing impending litigation over the matter.

In 2008, Joseph Sansone learned that the man using his son's Medicare had died, and figured that the issues finally would stop. They didn't. On April 30, 2010, Sansone's biggest fear - that the mixup would affect his son's health - materialized when treatment at a hospital for aspiration pneumonia was delayed because of the prior medical bills.

Sansone said that he contacted Jefferson again in May but never received a response.

"What if I'm not here and this happens to him again?" Sansone asked. "Who is going to fix it?"