Altum’s CEO and healthcare attorney, Elizabeth Richards, represented AU Medical Center in a Georgia Court of Appeals case that was decided in the hospital’s favor on April 30, 2025. The decision affirms a hospital’s right to enforce a lien for treatment provided to a minor involved in an accident, regardless of whether the minor is personally responsible for the bill.
The case, Progressive Mountain Insurance Company v. AU Medical Center, Inc. et al. (A25A072), involved a patient who was a minor at the time of treatment at AU Medical but had reached adulthood more than a year later when she settled her third-party claims against Progressive and signed a release. Although AU Medical Center had properly filed and perfected a hospital lien for her treatment, the lien was not satisfied from the settlement proceeds.
AU Medical Center filed a complaint against Progressive Mountain Insurance under Georgia’s hospital lien statute to recover the amount secured by the lien. Progressive argued that because the patient was a minor at the time of treatment, she was not personally responsible for the bill under OCGA § 19-7-2, which conferred the duty to pay a minor’s medical expenses on the parents, and therefore, the lien was invalid.
The Court of Appeals disagreed. Citing MCG Health v. Owners Ins. Co., 288 Ga. 782, the Court held that “the debt being owed by the patient, in order for a hospital to foreclose on a lien, is not a condition expressly stated in the statute.” Therefore, the fact that the patient in this case “legally did not owe the underlying debt for her medical treatment due to her minority status does not mean AU’s lien was not enforceable.”
Progressive additionally argued that AU’s lien only attached “to causes of action seeking medical expenses paid on behalf of [patient].” Since the cause of action for the expenses of the patient’s medical care vested in her parents, the lien did not attach. The Court disagreed stating that the hospital lien statues does not impose such a limitation. Instead, the statute states the lien attaches to “any and all cause of action.”
