May 14 2012
The Minnesota attorney general says the company has some overly-aggressive billing and collection practices.
(St. Paul) Pioneer Press: Accretive Health Issues Report In Response To Minnesota Attorney General's Allegations
The embattled Chicago firm that was the subject last month of a scathing report by Minnesota's attorney general has issued its own report designed to "set the record straight," the company said Friday, May 11. The 29-page report was released by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., because it features answers to a lengthy set of questions he issued last month. Franken questioned Accretive Health after Attorney General Lori Swanson issued her report alleging overly aggressive billing and collection tactics by Accretive Health and one of its local customers, the Fairview health system (Snowbeck, 5/11).
Minneapolis Star Tribune: In Response To Franken Query, Billing Firm Again Denies Pressuring Patients In a 29-page response to a series of questions posed by U.S. Sen. Al Franken, Accretive almost entirely dismissed Swanson's report, but did offer a caveat. "Several questions ask if Accretive Health is aware of any information suggesting that something occurred. These questions are very broad and could be misread as seeking answers based upon perfect knowledge of the actions of every employee throughout the company," read a footnote in the report (Mitchell, 5/12).
Modern Healthcare: In Letter To Franken, Accretive Denies Violating EMTALA
Collectors had access to an "easily understood description of the diagnosis code" for patients, the company said. Accounting software used by Fairview prior to its Accretive contract taking effect did not restrict access to patient information but the company began to limit its employees' access eight months into the Fairview contract, Accretive said (Evans, 5/12).
Meanwhile --
(St. Paul) Pioneer Press: Fairview U Hospital Visited By Investigators In Wake Of Accretive Furor
The federal agency that runs Medicare is investigating whether the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview violated federal law with its billing and collection practices in the emergency room (Snowbeck, 5/11).
 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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