Accretive Senior VP Kazarian:  “An executive of Accretive Health apologized Wednesday morning to Minnesota patients who felt offended..."

How to Do a Phony Apology...

Accretive Exec Demonstrates

At Franken Fairview Hospitals Hearing

One of the more disgusting tactics - often used by right wing radio announcers and pols like Minnesota Representative Franson - is an apology that does not admit wrong-doing but which not so subtly implies that the injured party is actually at fault for having been offended by the perp's actions. 

This type of non-apology is well described in the post:

“I Am Sorry You Were Offended” and Other Insincere Apologies 

Fortunately people are starting to get tired of this kind of chicanery.  It didn't work in this case and, hopefully, will not work in November when Minnesota voters have some important choices to make at the ballot box.

US Senator Franken held hearings yesterday on the shocking goings on at the Fairview hospital system.  Hopefully sunshine will help to disinfect this once fine institution. 

From theStar-Tribune:
(emphasis mine)

Accretive Senior Vice President Greg Kazarian came under intense questioning at a field hearing in St. Paul called by U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who said he was troubled not only by the way patients were hounded for payment but by the possibility that Accretive violated the privacy of thousands of Minnesotans who trusted their personal health records to Fairview and North Memorial hospitals.

The two-hour hearing included another revelation from Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson's 10-month investigation of the Chicago consulting firm. Swanson said North Memorial Medical Center, which also hired Accretive, gave the firm detailed patient health data without signing a written agreement, as required by a federal privacy law known as HIPAA.

The patient files vanished when an Accretive employee named Matthew Doyle left his company laptop computer in a car that was burglarized last summer in the Seven Corners area of Minneapolis. When Swanson asked North Memorial for a copy of the required "business associate contract," the Robbinsdale hospital and Accretive "concocted" one and backdated it by several months to make it appear that such a deal had been in place, Swanson said.

"That's a pretty explosive charge," Franken said, vowing to investigate further.

Franken noted that Doyle's laptop also contained private health data of thousands of Fairview patients, even though Doyle was not working on the Fairview account at the time.

Franken said he worries that such privacy breaches will cause patients to be less candid with their doctors, which could undermine their medical care.

The bulk of Wednesday's hearing was devoted to testimony about high-pressure bill collecting at Fairview, which surrendered its revenue management to Accretive under a 2010 contract designed to improve hospital finances.

Fairview patient Tom Fuller of New Brighton, for instance, spoke in a broken voice as he recounted being led to a tiny hospital room, away from his wife, by a Fairview "admissions" employee. When the door closed, he was unexpectedly grilled about an alleged unpaid balance on his hospital bill. He said he and his wife had paid about $10,000 of their own funds so he could receive a lung transplant, and he was having serious complications. They were current on their payments as far as he knew, he said.

"I was shaking. I was furious," Fuller said. "Nobody at that point should be going through something like that."

Kazarian, the corporate responsibility officer at Accretive, insisted that the company's practices are lawful, in line with industry practice and helpful to hospitals and patients.

Franken noted that Accretive bill collectors were trained not to give hospital patients the option of handling their debts at a different time, an apparent violation of fair debt collection law.

Kazarian responded: "If we can make our scripts better, then we will get at that work tomorrow."

Wednesday's hearing stemmed from an April report by Swanson that documented collection practices at Fairview hospitals designed to squeeze cash or credit-card payments from patients, sometimes while they writhed in pain before receiving medical treatment.

The report said Accretive imposed a "boiler-room style sales atmosphere" at Fairview that included quotas, inducements and punishments. Several doctors actually complained that such tactics might discourage patients from seeking medical care, the report found.

University of Minnesota Law Prof. Michele Goodwin testified that Swanson's allegations outline "a disconcerting pattern of coercion, exploitation, near-extortion, quid pro quo emergency medicine, indifference to patient privacy and abuse of patients."

While other witnesses praised Fairview's doctors and nurses for providing excellent care, Goodwin noted that hospital leaders are ultimately responsible for any violations.

Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Michael Rothman testified that Accretive went to "great lengths" to disguise its role as a collection agency when working with Fairview patients, a potential violation of state law. He said his office is continuing to investigate.

Franken is a member of the Senate Health Committee and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, which has been studying consumer privacy and protection issues. He said he'll use Wednesday's hearing to consider whether federal laws need to be strengthened.

At the State Capitol, a crowd including former Fairview patients gathered while Sen. Al Franken held a public hearing on high-pressure debt collection practices at Fairview Hospitals .

Some reader comments:

The non-apology apology. Someone at that place needs to take Public Relations 101.

Classic non-apology. the bad-cop tactics were harassment, classic textbook case. 

Offensive? No. I had no problem being asked for my Discover card (while sitting in the curtained exam space) to pre-pay a few hundred bucks for any ER costs not covered by my insurance. It would have been easy to swallow but for the fishbone lodged in my throat, which was the purpose of my visit. Offensive, intrusive, and awkward are three to start off... Lame apology not accepted.

----and this guy is an Executive?

Grown ups clearly were not in charge when these people were allowed to run wild. While the Fairview CEO took the hit, there remain layers of incompetent administration getting off scott free.

Yes, as above... "IF?" And I think "abusive" is a more correct statement of their practices.

We just don't "understand" them, they were trying to "help" patients pay their bills. That's what corporations do, they "help" us. And they were trying to "help" the hospital improve their finances, the operative phrase in this article.

Just read an article where a lady from White Bear Lake got 90 days in the workhouse for being offensive.  This guy by that standard needs about 14,000 years.

An apology has to have an admittance of wrongdoing as part of the expression of contrition; otherwise, it's what is known as a "Jane Fonda apology", where you simply say you're sorry if anyone was offended ... They are refusing to give a real one, probably at the advice of their in-house sharks. They're not fooling anyone, so why do they even bother?

I'd rather the guy state that he was not going to apologize instead of unloading a pile of BS as he did. This sort of arrogance doesn't surprise me anymore...

As a guy who works in the tech industry, you should never ever ever have client data on your laptop. You want access to the data? Then VPN in to the network and use it there. That's basic business practice at any company that knows how to properly handle data. Even ignoring for a moment the deplorable patient badgering, their handling of the data tells me volumes about how unprofessional their business controls are structured. If were up to me to make the decision they would never be allowed to bid on another contract at my company.

(There's more, see for yourself.  I am just too disgusted to fish it out.)