 Scholars report that private hospital administrations were motivated by a desire to keep mortality rates and costs down when they advised ambulance drivers to send poor patients in critical condition directly to the public hospitals like Bellevue even if a private hospital was closer.After the deaths associated with patient dumping or inappropriate patient transfer added up, the first attempt at legislative reform in the United States was pushed through the New York Senate around 1907, largely by Julius Harburger.The legislation penalized private hospitals when they sent ill patients away or obligated staff to transfer them to another hospital.