Need a job? Lack a soul?

Accretive Health has a position for you. The New York Times reports:

Hospital patients waiting in the emergency room or convalescing after surgery could find themselves confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.

Mary A. Tolan, Accretive Health CEO

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, according to documents released Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general. The documents say the company also used patient health records to wrangle for more money on overdue bills.

The company, Accretive Health, has contracts not only with the 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. Since January, it has faced a civil lawsuit filed by Attorney General Lori Swanson of Minnesota alleging that it violated state and federal debt-collection laws and patient privacy protections.

Shocking — that is, I find it shocking that Accretive’s morally dubious practices violate debt collection laws and privacy protections. These violations are contrary to the spirit of the times! I am sure that ALEC, with its deep and strong concern for protecting the rights of health care consumers to directly pay for their health care, will want to get these laws fixed as soon as possible.

Related articles

• Warning: Hospital Emergency Room Personnel May Be Debt Collectors (pubcit.typepad.com)
• Accretive Health Debt Collector Employee Has Laptop Stolen With Non Encrypted Patient Data from 2 Hospitals And Had Access to All the Data Via Revenue Cycling – Patient Information Was Shared With Wall Street Investors – Algorithms For Profit Again? (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)