May 31 2012
Sen. Al Franken, D- Minn., convened the hearing to find out whether aggressive efforts to collect debt from patients in hospitals broke any federal laws.
(St. Paul) Pioneer Press: Franken Hearing Wednesday To Focus On Fairview Collection Tactics
One of the witnesses scheduled to testify during a U.S. Senate field hearing about collection tactics at Fairview Health Services offered a preview of her comments on Tuesday, May 29. Jean Ross said the collection issue surfaced when her grandson was being treated in 2010 at Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville after the 13-month-old boy had been rushed to the emergency room with what turned out to be an acute inflammation of the brain called encephalitis (Snowbeck, 5/29).
The Associated Press/Minneapolis Star Tribune: Senate Hearing Will Spotlight Hospital Debt Collection
Health care executives will face tough questions Wednesday at a U.S. Senate field hearing after a lawsuit from Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson revealed aggressive efforts to collect debt from patients in Minnesota hospitals. Sen. Al Franken is holding the hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in St. Paul. Franken is examining whether the debt collection practices broke federal laws (5/30).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Hospital privatization leads to lower quality care, study reveals