Medical Debt

This project will analyze Massachusetts court data from MassCourtsPlus to identify and investigate lawsuits related to medical debt. The primary objective is to uncover the true extent—and minimum credible estimate—of medical debt lawsuits filed against individuals across the state. Using a combination of keyword filtering, plaintiff classification, and reverse-engineering of public methodologies used by the Massachusetts Trial Court, the team will focus on identifying key creditors (e.g., CareCredit/Synchrony, Comenity/Bread Financial, Wells Fargo) and debt buyers actively pursuing such cases. Special attention will be paid to entities filing large volumes of lawsuits and the diverse legal forms medical debt may take (e.g., dental, vision, ambulance, elective procedures). The analysis will directly support GBH’s investigative reporting by highlighting patterns in debt collection, potential disparities across courts, and the broader impact of these practices on individuals’ financial stability, health, and well-being. Over the summer, a team collected and standardized debt collection cases from MassCourts.org, cleaning plaintiff names for accuracy. From this dataset, we isolated and analyzed key subsets, including MSPCA Angell, Synchrony, and ambulance service cases. We also consolidated and analyzed the Division of Banks Debt Collector Annual Reports (2022–2024), preserving survey details to produce debt type classifications and trend analysis. This semester Jenifer would like to better understand how much of the debt lawsuit landscape can be confidently attributed to medical-related claims and look into the ambulance service cases and undercover how they are handled in Massachusetts court. I would suggest two focus areas: (1) Ambulances (2) Vets/Hospitals (including MSPCA - Mass Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Last 10 years only- 2014 until current