Aggressive hospital debt collector confronted patients at bedside/emergency room
Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals
Hospital patients waiting in the emergency room or convalescing after surgery could find themselves confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.
In November, Marcia Newton was shocked when she was forced to pay for her son Maxx’s ear tube surgery at Fairview Hospital even before he went into the hospital room.
----------------
In its pitches to hospitals, Accretive boasts that it trains its staff to focus on getting payment. Employees in the emergency room were told to ask incoming patients first for a credit-card payment. If that fails, employees are told to say, “If you have your checkbook in your car I will be happy to wait for you,” internal documents show.
In July 2010, a manager at Accretive told staff members at Fairview Health Services, a Minnesota hospital group, that they should “get cracking on labor and delivery,” since there is a “good chunk to be collected there,” according to internal company e-mails.
-----------------
Patients with outstanding balances are closely tracked by Accretive staff members, who list them on what employees refer to as “stop lists,” internal documents show. In March 2011, doctors at Fairview complained that such strong-arm tactics were discouraging patients from seeking life-saving treatments, but Accretive officials dismissed the complaints as “country club talk,” the documents show.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/business/debt-collector-is-faulted-for-tough-tactics-in-hospitals.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
