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

[shyhelpless]

Fascinating long read in today’s (9/25 print edition) The New York Times about Providence, a nonprofit hospital chain based in Washington, which is currently being sued by the state’s Attorney General for state law violations in billing, such as sending Medicaid patients to third-party collections agencies when they should have owed $0, etc. (The Times story also finds problems with the billing from Providence locations in Oregon and California too. But so far Washington is the only state suing.)

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

ETA: also, the consulting company involved here, McKinsey & Company, is the same McKinsey & Company that paid $600m last year for its part in Purdue’s opioid scandal. Which is a whole different but related conversation.

ETA x2: @skylar222 put a gift link in their comment below. Sorry y’all, I wasn’t even thinking about the paywall here.

 

[shanexo]

@shyhelpless Not surprised.

Spouse used to work there. The service division was given a choice: move to Portland or Texas, or go away. We decided to move to Texas but it felt wrong, so he basically quit his job. Yes, without another one lined up.

Last I heard, service desk, HR, and some billing functions may have been fully offshored. A former coworker mentioned that due to serious screw ups on PSJH(&beyond)'s side, she was on hold with them for hours per day (as a vendor who services them).

 

[myshepherd443]

@shanexo I also used to work for Providence, and left when departments I depended on moved overseas. Outsourcing is a total boondoggle—the quality of services and efficiency is such shit, and it was just more evidence they didn’t really care about doing excellent work.

A lot of KPI’s were centered around “checking the box” instead of making care better/safer. I’m on the for-profit vendor side now and we have a more genuine commitment to values and patient-centered outcomes than Providence ever did.

Sad, because the nuns who founded Providence were genuine heroines of their time whose legacy is not being upheld.

 

[shyhelpless]

@shanexo The one where they sent the Providence employee to collections was just mind boggling.

 

[chophaslir]

@shyhelpless

Providence avoids more than $1 billion a year in taxes. In exchange, the Internal Revenue Service requires them to provide services

How's that working out?

 

[burnedfaceless]

@chophaslir In order for hospitals to keep their nonprofit status, they have to have programs in place that aid families without incomes large enough to cover their medical expenses, called Charity Care.

Alas, they're not obligated to actually tell anyone about that.

 

[jojo2]

@shyhelpless As a Seattle-area resident, fuck Providence. I'm not at all surprised it's them running this scam.

 

[skylar222]

@shyhelpless I pulled a gift link for this article, which means you should be able to read it at this link without worrying about a paywall. Let me know if that's not true, cos this is my first time trying this feature out

shouldn't have a paywall

Edit to make the link smaller in my comment via formatting, because that link is atrocious.

 

[peninnah]

@skylar222 Thank you!

 

[tre_corvus]

@skylar222 Thanks for the link.

 

[shell65]

@shyhelpless McKinsey was involved in illegal shit? You don't say.

 

[secret_catholic]

@shell65 If you have some time to spare, google "McKinsey evil".

 

[joy9865]

@shyhelpless I wasn't surprised when I read that article.

 

[alexc4]

@shyhelpless Ugh, been upset with providence ever since they got me excited with a job offer to work in the spinal cord injury unit as a medical assistant (which as you can imagine would be pretty physically and emotionally demanding work) for barely above minimum wage. I feel like if you’re gonna pull scumbag shit like this and pay your CEO over 10 mil a year you could at least have competitive salaries. Fuck for profit hospitals and fuck catholic hospitals

 

[charmstar4]

@shyhelpless I work for providence and I'm pretty sure we a not for profit organization. Which is entirely different from a non-profit. I think we changed like 2-3 years ago.

 

[acecomando101]

@shyhelpless I read that. It hurt to read what they are doing to poor people.

 

[resjudicata]

@shyhelpless Hospital in my area has done the same thing to people around here. I got crutches from them once and spent months trying to get them to send the bill to my insurance and not me. They rarely even picked up the phone when I tried to call them to sort it out. Eventually someone from Medicaid said they'd sort it out because I'd called them a handful of times to see if they got it yet (because even when the hospital said they'd send it, they actually wouldn't). It's freaking crazy and inhumane

 

[resjudicata]

@shyhelpless Don't @me too soon, but this is why I'm glad that so many medical professionals are burning out and quitting. The fewer doctors and nurses these greedy hospital systems have, the sooner they'll enter a death spiral.