Not All Hospitals Abandoning Accretive

Not everyone is abandoning embattled ARM firm Accretive Health, Inc. While Minnesota and Accretive are essentially broken up forever, Utah’s Intermountain Healthcare is choosing to work things out.

Accretive’s role in a hospital can best be described as “outsourced administration.” Accretive manages the entire revenue cycle, from the scheduling, registering and admitting of patients to back-office billing functions.

Of course, since things have gone south between Accretive and Minnesota’s Fairview Health Services, scrutiny is the watchword for any company doing business with Accretive. However, Intermountain Healthcare characterizes its relationship with Accretive as entirely different: “both more collaborative and more expansive,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

(You may also be interested in Contributing Editor Evan J. Albright’s opinion piece, published in today’s newsletter: Collecting Legitimate Fees No Crime.)

In fact, Intermountain Finance Vice President Greg Johnson has said that while his hospital is closely monitoring the sitiation with Fairview in Minnesota, Intermountain has no plans to re-evaluate its contract.

Accretive has filed a motion this week to dismiss the Minnesota lawsuit. In a prepared statement, the company denied Swanson’s allegations as based on “innuendo and unfounded speculation” and noted that 90 percent of all revenue it collects comes from insurers.

You can follow insideARM.com’s continuing coverage of Accretive via these links:

>> State AG Sues Medical Collection Agency Over Privacy Issues
>> Patient Collections Gone Bad at Minnesota Hospital System
>> insideARM on Forbes: Accretive Health Stock Bruised on AG Report
>> Embattled Firm Accretive Tied to Debt Collection Arbitration Scandal
>> Accretive Health Denies AG Charges, Moves to Dismiss