Maryland family owes $1.3 million after specialized OCD program cut short by insurance limits
A 24-year-old Maryland woman received one year of residential psychiatric care at Sheppard Pratt before her family could no longer pay the daily rate. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield covered only a portion of the cost, and the family now owes the hospital $1.3 million.
Nbc NewsRachel Levasseur, 24, completed one year in Sheppard Pratt’s self-pay residential program, The Retreat, before her stay ended in March when her family could not continue paying nearly $3,000 per day. Levasseur has complex obsessive-compulsive disorder compounded by autism spectrum disorder.
Before entering the program, she required constant home monitoring and had attempted suicide multiple times over seven years.
Treatment and coverage dispute The Retreat provided a personalized team of psychiatrists and therapists and used radically open dialectical behavior therapy. Levasseur’s parents, Larry and Kandy Levasseur, said she became more social and had no suicide attempts during the year.
CareFirst, the family’s insurer through a Maryland state employee plan, paid $521 of the roughly $3,300 daily charge. The Levasseurs appealed to the Maryland Insurance Administration and the state Employee Benefits Division, which declined further coverage.
Bryan Mroz, vice president of Sheppard Pratt, wrote in a May email that the hospital would enter a single-case agreement to address the balance. The Employee Benefits Division told NBC News the Levasseurs had contacted an alternative in-network facility; the Levasseurs said they had not.
Current status Levasseur now receives care in Sheppard Pratt’s in-network inpatient unit. The hospital has stated it will not readmit her to The Retreat until the outstanding balance is resolved. Larry and Kandy Levasseur said they took a second mortgage and used retirement savings to cover part of the cost.
They reported the remaining balance as approximately $1.3 million. Levasseur said the program differed from prior treatment because staff did not give up on her progress. Her parents said her symptoms have begun to regress outside the specialized setting.
