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kalikshama -> Debt collectors infiltrate hospitals (5/3/2012 7:17:54 AM)
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Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals
April 24, 2012
Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.
This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.
The tactics, like embedding debt collectors as employees in emergency rooms and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment, were outlined in hundreds of company documents released by the attorney general. And they cast a spotlight on the increasingly desperate strategies among hospitals to recoup payments as their unpaid debts mount.
To patients, the debt collectors may look indistinguishable from hospital employees, may demand they pay outstanding bills and may discourage them from seeking emergency care at all, even using scripts like those in collection boiler rooms, according to the documents and employees interviewed by The New York Times.
In some cases, the company’s workers had access to health information while persuading patients to pay overdue bills, possibly in violation of federal privacy laws, the documents indicate.
The attorney general, Lori Swanson, also said that Accretive employees may have broken the law by not clearly identifying themselves as debt collectors.
Accretive Health has contracts not only with two hospitals cited in Minnesota but also with some of the largest hospital systems in the country, including Henry Ford Health System in Michigan and Intermountain Healthcare in Utah. Company executives declined to comment on Tuesday.
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Accretive Denies Accusations of Pressuring Patients to Pay
April 29, 2012
Accretive Health, one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical bills, took issue on Sunday with a report by the Minnesota attorney general’s office that it puts bedside pressure on patients to pay their bills.
The allegations “grossly distort and mischaracterize” the company’s revenue cycle services, it said in a statement. The suggestion that Accretive puts bedside pressure on patients to pay their bills out of pocket is a “flagrant distortion of fact,” the company said. It said it was working with its advisers to address those allegations.
Accretive shares plunged nearly 42 percent on Wednesday after Attorney General Lori Swanson of Minnesota issued a report contending that Accretive violated federal and state patient-privacy and debt-collection laws. She said that in some cases patients at Fairview Health Services, a Minnesota hospital chain, were pressured for payment before they received care and that Accretive’s debt collectors did not properly disclose their role.
Accretive said in its statement that it did not deny access to patient care and that the allegations were “flatly untrue.”
Ms. Swanson said last week that employees at Fairview, a nonprofit chain of seven hospitals based in Minneapolis, were required to use a system to track whether patients paid their bills.
Accretive said late Friday that Fairview had canceled its contract with the company.
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