It was the post seen ‘round Bellefontaine.
After we found that Mary Rutan Hospital in the small Southern Ohio town had sued 2,700 people in two years for unpaid medical debt, we set out to find the story beyond the numbers.
In a search to find people who had been sued, my colleague, Jake Zuckerman, and I started the painstaking process of tracking down contact information for people who appeared on hundreds of pages of an online court docket.
Using search engines and a court filing here and there, we looked for phone numbers, social media profiles and email addresses wherever we could find them.
After striking out with some cold calls, I decided put out a call for sources on some local Facebook groups discovered by Jake. He’d already found one group that stood out because of its name: “Nosey asses of Bellefontaine.”
I turned to a different community page, where our post went viral among residents of Bellefontaine, racking up 370 comments. It also got shared 200 times. It helped trigger an avalanche of responses. I heard from around 64 people directly, and Jake and I talked to or emailed with around two dozen more. There were too many responses to log and to directly follow up with everyone. The hospital CEO in a few emails noted our “recent social media posts” (there was only one, thank you).
I also heard about the post from friends of my family who live in the area, which gave us a real indication of how it really got around.
Our entreaty apparently was well timed. Several people who reached out had just found out they were being sued and were looking for options. The response reinforced my belief that people – who often feel shame of not being able to pay your bills – found some comfort in not being alone.
And then there was another category of people for whom our post was especially well-timed.
Ashley Mack doesn’t get on Facebook much, but her husband does. He saw the Facebook post, which made him curious enough to call the hospital. That’s how he found out he owed $1,600 to Mary Rutan. Before he could tell her about it, Ashley Mack got an email notification that she had a certified letter coming her way.
Turns out she was getting sued for $1,117 by Mary Rutan. She thanked us for posting it – it was too late for her but it saved her husband a lawsuit.
“Well, because you guys posted it, my husband was able to not get [sued],” she said in an interview.
For all the grief social media causes, speaking as a journalist it’s also a useful tool that can connect people in powerful ways. The post seen ‘round Bellefontaine is a classic example.
