Warning: Hospital Emergency Room Personnel May Be Debt Collectors

Read this eye-popping story in today's New York Times. A debt collection company, Accretive Health, allegedly staffs hospitals and then uses its staff's proximity to patients and patients' health records to collect patients' debts for the hospitals. Here's an excerpt:

Hospital patients waiting in the emergency room or convalescing after surgery could find themselves confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside. One of the nation’s largest medical debt-collection companies is under fire in Minnesota for having placed its employees in emergency rooms and other departments at two hospitals and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment ... .  The documents say the company also used patient health records to wrangle for more money on overdue bills. ...[Minnesota Attorney General Lori] Swanson, though not bringing further charges on Tuesday, said she was in discussions with state and federal regulators to prompt a widespread crackdown on Accretive Health’s practices in other states. “I have every reason to believe that what they are doing in Minnesota is simply company practice[.]”

Comments

[Hospital Dream jobs]

this is great, thank you so much! keep us posted!

[Moore Law Firm]

Thank you for sharing this important story. Unethical practices by debt collectors in hospitals are yet another tactic consumers need to be aware of. As the Times article states, these are “increasingly desperate” strategies to recoup payments. Here in Ohio, the state Supreme Court ruled last year that hospitals are allowed to bill a patient’s auto insurance company at whatever price the hospital determines for services provided to a person injured in a car accident. To read now that debt collectors are seeking payment before any procedure has been performed is even more discouraging and, as the consumer advocate in the article says, “in direct opposition to the supposed mission of these hospitals.”