Surprisingly, nonprofit hospitals were more likely to sue patients than Virginia’s few for-profit hospitals.2 My team and I also gathered more information on the patients being sued. People in rural areas were just as vulnerable as those in urban and suburban parts of the state. Our study showed where the patients who had their wages garnished were employed. At the top of the list was Walmart, with about 450 employees from Virginia who had their wages garnished in 2017.
