Johns Hopkins Hospital sicced collections attorneys on thousands of patients over the past decade, often taking extraordinary measures to extract payment from patients who probably owed no money at all under the state laws governing the non-profit medical provider.

According to a new report from union researchers with National Nurses United (NNU), the hospital’s outside counsel sued 2,438 separate former patients between January 2009 and December 2018, typically over sums so modest that they pose no threat to the balance-sheet health of either JHH or the broader Johns Hopkins Medicine network of facilities and providers.