CAPE COD, Mass. — Boston 25 first told you last month about a heroic rescue on Cape Cod. Strangers jump in to save a man who suffered a medical emergency while driving.
“We broke into his car through his window, got the car in park, put him in the back of his car and gave him CPR,” Paul Manganella said.
Manganella went straight to Falmouth Hospital last month to get tested for COVID-19 after saving a stranger who had a heart attack while driving on Route 6 in Sandwich.
“The paramedic looks at me and he was like, ‘Were you wearing a mask when you gave him CPR?’ and I was like, ‘Oh no.’ We kind of had just forgotten about it [the pandemic] all,” Manganella said.
At the hospital, Manganella was told that he couldn’t get a coronavirus test and would instead have to quarantine for 14 days.
“I’m not an anxious guy but I was like, ‘Can I have the test?’ I have a fiancé and my parents are a little older and her parents are a little older so I was like, ‘Can I have the test?’ and she was like, ‘No,’” Manganella said.
A few weeks later he received a bill for just over $1,000. He called his insurance company who was prepared to cover the bill as long as the hospital recoded the visit as coronavirus related.
But Manganella says the hospital wouldn’t rebill his insurance. Others stepped up and offered to pay but Manganella says he just wants the hospital to do the right thing.
“It’s one of those things like, $1,000? I came in in the middle of a pandemic with another guy’s blood on my face. I wanted a test and if I had gotten the test I would have avoided a thousand dollar fine,” Manganella said.
Although it may seem like no good deed goes unpunished, Manganella says if faced with the same situation again, he’d still jump in to help, no matter what.
“I would definitely do it again, end of the day. But you can see why people give this stuff second thoughts,” he said.
Hours after Boston 25 reached out to Cape Cod Healthcare on Friday, Manganella received a call from them apologizing for the error and said he no longer owes the money.
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