Nine months pregnant and expecting any moment, Julie Ledford instead rushed her husband to the emergency room at Texas Health Fort Worth hospital with severe abdominal pains a year ago. When Eric Ledford was asked for his insurance card by a hospital admittance officer, he handed it over and never saw it again.

He signed some papers and received treatment. Turns out he had two kidney stones. A few days later, Julie Ledford returned to the hospital and had her daughter.

For much of the past year, though, the Ledfords have tried to explain to hospital billing administrators and then a collection agency that the hospital messed up the bill for Eric’s ER stay. But nobody would listen.

The hospital never entered his address or insurance information into his file. The Ledfords never got a bill. But months later, when they checked Eric’s credit report, they found an unpaid $3,000 debt to a collection agency hired by Texas Health Resources. That payment should have been covered by insurance, but the claim was never filed.

Julie Ledford, a teacher, says she tried for months to talk to the right person at the hospital. She never found a sympathetic ear. Then she wrote The Watchdog.

I checked out a similar case of unresponsive customer service at the hospital several months ago for another reader.

In February, hospital spokeswoman Whitney Jodry told me, "We are reviewing all of our billing responses to ensure that our patients’ questions are answered in a timely fashion."

How did that review go?

In the Ledfords’ case, the reason listed in credit records for lack of payment is that Eric Ledford never signed a consent form. He did. The hospital couldn’t find it.

During admittance, hospital staff copied his driver’s license but didn’t put the copy in his file.

When the Ledfords returned home and realized that the insurance card was missing, they immediately notified the hospital.

No one knows what happened to the card.

The address where the bills were sent is an address the Ledfords never used.

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