New Mexico’s Memorial Medical Center says it doesn’t turn away patients. Thirteen cancer patients said they met with denials of care or demands for up-front payment.

For almost three decades, Barbara Quarrell cared for patients as a nurse in Las Cruces, New Mexico, working for many years at Memorial Medical Center, a nonprofit community hospital owned by the city and the county.

So when she received a devastating cancer diagnosis in 2022, she headed to Memorial for treatment. “That’s my hospital,” she told NBC News. “My people are there.”

Memorial is now operated as a for-profit facility by Lifepoint Health, a hospital chain backed by private equity, and it had other plans for her, Quarrell said.