NEW YORK — Patients at a New York City hospital are getting billed for tens of millions of dollars because of a computer error.

Unemployed doorman Alexis Rodriguez says he almost became ill when he received a $44.8 million bill from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center.

Rodriguez tells the New York Daily News (http://nydn.us/AjolYU ) that he was hospitalized last spring with pneumonia and was afraid the bill was legit.

Turns out the company that prepares the bills had mistakenly put the invoice number in the space where the invoice amount should go.

The billing company is telling patients to ignore the multimillion-dollar bills. It says it will send out corrected ones.

The hospital didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday, which is a holiday.