By BARBARA GREEN

With less than a month before the closing date for the sale of the former Bowie hospital, the Bowie Hospital Authority is making efforts to collect outstanding accounts receivables as its moves toward dissolution after the sale.

The amount owed to hospital and its subsidiaries totals $35,046,267.40.

It is a shocking number, but yet another factor in the journey that led to the closure of the hospital last November. Chief Executive Officer Lynn Heller gave public notice on the accounts receivable publishing it in The Bowie News this week.

Heller said while he does not have a specific date for the oldest billing he expects some may go back to when the hospital went to a computerized billing system around 1990. The major component of the amount is bad debt which makes up $33,140,123.31 of that total.

Read the full story in the weekend News.