A Los Gatos mother is raising the alarm about Good Samaritan Hospital billings after receiving a nearly $30,000 invoice following her son’s short hospital visit.
Christine Sterpetti, 59, says she and her husband brought her son (who was in 8th grade at the time) to the emergency room to get checked out after he fell off his bike and landed on his tailbone near Union Middle School, Oct. 2, 2023.
“He wasn’t in a wheelchair. He wasn’t having to be assisted into the hospital,” Sterpetti told the newspaper in a telephone interview. “It was just a precautionary visit. It wasn’t like he was scraped-up or anything like that.”
But then, around a year later, a bill for $29,825 was generated and sent to Sterpetti’s husband’s insurance company Meritain Health (the son is on the father’s insurance plan).
A medical record obtained by the Los Gatan, dated Nov. 11, 2024, lists $7,914 for “Room and Care,” $4,950 for X-rays, $16,945 for “LVL 5 EMER DEPT,” and $16 for a 200mg ibuprofen tab.
“Obviously the insurance company is like, we’re not paying $30,000 for this,” she said, adding that after behind-the-scenes negotiations between the insurance company and the hospital, she was on the hook for $1,944.41. “I flipped out.”
The thing is, Sterpetti has had plenty of experience taking her son to various health care institutions over the years.
“He broke his arm skateboarding when he was four,” she said, noting they were in Italy at the time, so they were able to take him to a publicly funded site. “I think it cost us like seven euros.”
She remembers her son went to Good Sam for a broken wrist once, but says the bill wasn’t too bad that time.
After he had a nasty encounter with a thornback ray while out in the ocean they took him to a private clinic in Los Gatos.
“My kid has had a few broken bones, just being active,” she said, adding when she was told her son had been in some kind of biking incident, she thought, Here we go again.
The Los Gatan spoke with her son, who agreed to share his photo but preferred not to give his name.
He said in the scheme of things, the bike accident was so minor he barely remembers it.
According to his mother, she and her husband sat with their son in a waiting area much of the time, and not in a private—or even semi-private—room.
“At the end of the day all they did was give him ibuprofen,” she said, adding she thinks they may have given him Tylenol, too, although that’s not listed on the bill. “They did not give us the X-rays.”
So, she says she was astounded to see Good Samaritan was charging for high-level emergency care.
“That’s when I’m questioning them about, ‘What are all these charges?’” she said. “I said, ‘He never got a semi-private room. He sat in a waiting room like everyone else.’”
And she asked about the Level 5 designation.
“He wasn’t in an ambulance,” she said. “He came in walking. This was outrageous.”
According to Sterpetti, the hospital offered to do an investigation and to put their bill on hold while that’s underway, but then never got back to them.
Sterpetti says she’s the one who called, on May 13 this year, to get the results of the review.
The hospital told her that the semi-private room had been taken off of the bill and that they’d drop the care designation down to a Level 3, she claims.
This would bring the new total down from around $30,000 to $10,629, she said.
However, in the meantime, Good Sam sent their case to collections.
A hospital statement dated Jan. 2, 2025, also obtained by the Los Gatan, confirms her son spent less than a day in the hospital.
And it shows $6,251.59 was already paid—which Sterpetti says was covered by her insurance company.
It also demanded $1,944.41 by Jan. 22.
Since then, Sterpetti has been dealing with a collections agency called Medicredit.
“They tell me, yes you need to pay this bill,” she said, adding when she tried to call the hospital for an explanation she got the cold shoulder. “I keep getting looped back into Medicredit.”
Sterpetti says the collections agency offered her 40% off. She says she paid $1,361.09 on July 10, because she felt pressured to take a bad deal in order to avoid financial repercussions.
Now she’s questioning the math behind that transaction.
And Sterpetti says, in retrospect, she thinks it’s unfair, because it was apparently based on the amount she originally owed.
“What happens if I don’t pay that?” she wonders. “As a patient, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
Plus, she says, there’s a weird thing happening where, because the hospital took so long to make their initial claim, there were technical issues with getting the lower rate approved—something told to her by Accolade, a middleman that works with their insurance company.
“They told me that the hospital did try and resubmit the new lower amount claim, but that it was rejected because it was past the one-year mark that hospitals are given to submit claims,” Sterpetti said. “According to our insurance company, based on the $10,626, our portion would have been much less.”
Her next step is to go down to the hospital in-person to demand answers.
“I am so frustrated and angry,” she said. “Everyone in our community needs to know what Good Sam is capable of doing.”
The Los Gatan asked Good Samaritan hospital about the case and about its billing practices, but the hospital declined to comment.
“As always, Good Samaritan Hospital is focused on providing the highest-quality care to every patient,” a spokesperson said. “As part of this commitment, we also protect their confidentiality under the HIPAA privacy rule. In this case, we are committed to upholding that policy.”
Efforts to get a comment about the situation from Accolade and Meritain Health were not successful by deadline.
