In Capito v. San Jose Healthcare System, the Supreme Court yesterday held that compliance with federal and state statutes detailing how hospitals must disclose prices insulates hospitals from nondisclosure liability under other statutes, specifically California’s Unfair Competition Law and the Consumers Legal Remedies Act.
The dispute in the case was about evaluation and management services fees for emergency room patients. Statutes require those fees and others to be published online in a “chargemaster” and also mandate hospitals to post a notice in the emergency department how the chargemaster can be accessed.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu held hospitals do not have a further responsibility, as the plaintiff contended, to specifically notify emergency room patients they will be charged EMS fees. “Requiring such disclosure,” the court said, “would alter the careful balance of competing interests, including price transparency and provision of emergency care without regard to cost, reflected in the multifaceted scheme developed by state and federal authorities.”
The court affirms the Sixth District Court of Appeal’s unpublished opinion. It also disapproves the Fifth District’s opinions in Torres v. Adventist Health System/West (2022) 77 Cal.App.5th 500 and Naranjo v. Doctors Medical Center of Modesto, Inc. (2023) 90 Cal.App.5th 1193. Yesterday’s decision aligns with the First District, Division One, opinion in Gray v. Dignity Health (2021) 70 Cal.App.5th 225 and the First District, Division Four, opinion in Saini v. Sutter Health (2022) 80 Cal.App.5th 1054. The Supreme Court denied three depublication requests in Torres, it denied review and a depublication request in Gray, and it also denied review and a depublication request in Sani. Naranjo is a grant-and-hold for yesterday’s opinion. (See here.)
