Northwell Health says it will stop suing patients during pandemic Modern Healthcare Illustration / Getty Images Northwell Health has vowed to stop suing patients over unpaid bills during the COVID-19 pandemic following a report that it sued thousands of patients last year. Not-for-profit Northwell, New York state's biggest private hospital system, sued more than 2,500 patients last year, a New York Times investigation found. Over the same period, almost all other major private hospitals in the state voluntarily halted the practice after Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered public hospitals to do so. Northwell has said it will drop those claims. Suing over unpaid bills is an extreme practice that hospital leaders say they'd prefer to avoid, but some argue is necessary when patients don't meet their financial assistance criteria. There isn't much national data on how often it happens. Rather, such litigation commonly comes to light through media reports, such as the 2019 Kaiser Health News investigation that found UVA Health System in Charlottesville, Va., sued about 6,000 patients per year. That same year, Modern Healthcare reported that Ballad Health in Johnson City, Tenn., had filed about 5,700 lawsuits against patients in its first fiscal year as a health system.