They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay.

[dalton99a]

Last edited Sat Sep 24, 2022, 11:09 AM - Edit history (2)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/nonprofit-hospitals-poor-patients.html
https://archive.ph/smLuw

They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay.
With the help of a consulting firm, the Providence hospital system trained staff to wring money out of patients, even those eligible for free care.
By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Katie Thomas
Sept. 24, 2022

In 2018, senior executives at one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital chains, Providence, were frustrated. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars providing free health care to patients. It was eating into their bottom line.

The executives, led by Providence’s chief financial officer at the time, devised a solution: a program called Rev-Up.

Rev-Up provided Providence’s employees with a detailed playbook for wringing money out of patients — even those who were supposed to receive free care because of their low incomes, a New York Times investigation found.

In training materials obtained by The Times, members of the hospital staff were instructed how to approach patients and pressure them to pay.

“Ask every patient, every time,” the materials said. Instead of using “weak” phrases — like “Would you mind paying?” — employees were told to ask how patients wanted to pay. Soliciting money “is part of your role. It’s not an option.”

If patients did not pay, Providence sent debt collectors to pursue them.


Employees at the Providence hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif., were told to seek money from patients as soon as doctors finished examining them. Credit...Preston Gannaway for The New York Times


Providence put Alexandra Nyfors on a payment plan, forcing her to go without heat. Credit...Jovelle Tamayo for The New York Times

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/business/coronavirus-hospitals-bailout.html

Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers
Twenty large chains received more than $5 billion in federal grants even while sitting on more than $100 billion in cash.
By Jesse Drucker, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Sarah Kliff
Published May 25, 2020 Updated Oct. 22, 2021

A multibillion-dollar institution in the Seattle area invests in hedge funds, runs a pair of venture capital funds and works with elite private equity firms like the Carlyle Group.

But it is not just another deep-pocketed investor hunting for high returns. It is the Providence Health System, one of the country’s largest and richest hospital chains. It is sitting on nearly $12 billion in cash, which it invests, Wall Street-style, in a good year generating more than $1 billion in profits.

And this spring, Providence received at least $509 million in government funds, one of many wealthy beneficiaries of a federal program that is supposed to prevent health care providers from capsizing during the coronavirus pandemic.


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Providence’s chief financial officer Venkat Bhamidipati - greedy, soulless ghoul:

[gopiscrap]

1. this is why we need a national single payer system

like much of Europe. Health care should never be privatized. I am from Germany and when I was an infant I spent 6 months in the hospital one of those months in intensive care and my parents bill for ALL treatment and for the room and board for 38.00 granted this was in 1957 so those 38.00 would equal today and that was because I had a private room. Fucking Ronald Reagan working as whore for the AMA in the early 50's when we could have something like the British NHS kept on scaring folks saying that that was like socialism which everybody mistakenly equalted to Communism and killed our chances for a single payer sytem.

[area51]

3. +1

We desperately need universal healthcare.

[leftstreet]

2. DURec

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. We can fix this shit if enough people would bother to vote!

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!

THESE are the races that will determine control of the House of Representatives:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217175231

Stick 'em up for a blue wave: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217078977

[Demovictory9]

5. Kick