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When medical receivables become aged, healthcare providers will enlist the help of the ARM industry to collect the debt. The medical, or healthcare, sector of the debt collection industry is robust, with specialty debt buyers, collection agencies and collection law firms providing service. A typical account usually involves a self-pay portion of treatment costs not covered by insurance or government programs which needs to be paid by the patient. Some medical offices also offer financing for their services and for certain elective procedures, loans which could go into default.
Accretive has assembled a panel to be led by Michael Leavitt, former Secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and three-term governor from Utah. Leavitt will be joined by former U.S. senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist and numerous health care industry experts.
Accretive wrote a 29-page response to questions from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who has been investigating the claims against the company made by the attorney general. As part of his investigation, Sen. Franken announced that the Senate Health Committee will hold a hearing in Minnesota later this month.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s scathing report into collection practices by Accretive Health may have attracted the attention of the federal U.S. Health and Human Services Department. It’s the latest group to wade into the medical debt collection fray, a group that includes a state attorney general, a federal agency, U.S. Representatives and Senators, and the mayor of a major city.
Political humor and satire savant Stephen Colbert ran a produced piece Wednesday on his show, “The Colbert Report,” that directly addressed the Accretive scandal.
What seemed like a finger-pointing slam-dunk against Accretive Health, Inc., has, instead, quickly become a mire of nuance. As insideARM.com Contributing Editor Evan J. Albright writes in an Opinion piece, “What is troubling is that some of the procedures it implemented at Fairview, though criticized by the AG, are considered best practices by health care organizations across the country.” As we see in today’s Top Story, not everyone is abandoning Accretive. Some people see the ARM company as a value-add revenue partner.
The attorney general’s complaint “includes allegations that are factually baseless and legally indefensible,” states the company. “What is worse is that rather than litigate this case in the courtroom, the Attorney General orchestrated a nationwide media campaign against Accretive Health.”
The chairman of medical revenue cycle management and ARM firm Accretive Health was an investor in the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), a company that was forced to abandon consumer debt arbitration cases after a scandal involving lopsided results in credit card debt collection cases.
Not sure if any of you noticed yesterday, but Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson published a six-volume report on the practices of non-profit hospital and clinic operator Fairview Health Services and one of its service providers, ARM firm Accretive Health, Inc. The report focused on a broad range of issues, but the debt collection and payment practices caught the most attention. Unsurprisingly, Accretive’s stock fell more than 40 percent Wednesday. Read our analysis on Forbes.com.
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Admissions staff at a Minnesota hospital received scripts and supporting software tools from a firm offering revenue cycle management services for hospitals, designed to pressure patients to pay for medical services before receiving them. “The scripts can lead a patient or her family to believe the patient will not receive treatment until payment is made,” according to the attorney general’s report.
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