Accretive Denies Accusations of Pressuring Patients to Pay
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
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.
Nonprofit Hospitals Faulted For Stinginess With Charity Care
Friday, 04/27/12 6:05pm - All Things Considered
Jenny Gold
Even before the hospital bills started coming, Lori Duff and her family were living paycheck to paycheck. So when the debt collector called the Columbus, Ohio, mother and demanded $1,800 for the prenatal visits she'd had while pregnant with her third son, she panicked.
Medical care shifting to electronic data files
Electronic health records are being used in hospitals and doctors’ offices. So how are they doing? Do the e-records protect and promote patient safety?
Quick Facts About High-Deductible Health Plans
New Millinocket health clinic a boon to the Katahdin region, officials say
Posted April 26, 2012, at 6:40 p.m.
MILLINOCKET, Maine — Stan Pettegrow loves his new workplace.
About 12,000 square feet of gleaming new offices and examination rooms, the new Katahdin Valley Health Center at Aroostook Avenue and Summer Street is a vast improvement over the 1,800-square-foot space it supplements, the licensed clinical social worker said.
“I think there is a really nice flow here,” Pettegrow said Thursday. “The clinical space can accommodate a lot more patients and providers. The most important part is that they [patients] can receive their mental health services right in their doctor’s office, and it [the new building] definitely opens the possibilities for even more behavioral health care services.”
About 50 people attended an open house at the facility on Thursday, the first held since construction of the $2.3 million primary care, behavioral and dental health care center began in January 2011.
The center is downtown Millinocket’s first new building in decades and represents a valuable addition to the Katahdin region for its ability to complement services offered at Millinocket Regional Hospital and by the region’s other health care providers, town officials have said.
Group backs human rights status for health care
Health Care for All-Oregon plans statewide campaign to put pressure on Legislature
By Bennett HallCorvallis Gazette-Times, April 24, 2012
Taking a page from Vermont’s playbook, Oregon reform advocates plan to launch a major campaign to have health care declared a human right.
“It means you get the care you need when you need it,” said Dr. Mike Huntington of Corvallis, the newly elected president of Health Care for All-Oregon.
The statewide organization’s ultimate goal remains single-payer health care — a taxpayer-funded system that would cover medical, mental and dental treatment for all Oregon residents, replacing private health insurance.
But despite some support in Salem, single-payer bills have never gotten very far in the Legislature.
Now, Huntington said, it’s time for a new tactic: a broad-based effort to mobilize public support for the notion that everyone deserves access to health care.
“We realized from others’ experience — primarily from Vermont — that it doesn’t really matter how good your argument is,” Huntington said. “It’s how well you can move people.”
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/april/group-backs-human-rights-status-for-health-care
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