Becker's Hospital Review

12 CFO / FINANCE CHS has sued 19,000 patients for unpaid bills amid the pandemic By Alia Paavola F ranklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems has filed at least 19,000 lawsuits against patients to collect unpaid bills since March 2020, CNN reported May 17. The for-profit system, which has 84 hospitals across 16 states, has sued patients to recoup as little as $201 and as much as $162,000 in unpaid medical bills, according to the report. CNN found that most patients CHS sued didn't hire a lawyer or fight the lawsuits, and judges often ruled in the company's favor by default. Additionally, CNN re- ported that the hospital operator's subsidiaries quickly moved to garnish defen- dants' paychecks after a ruling. In a statement shared with Becker's Hospital Review, CHS said legal action is always the "last resort" and is only pursued against patients who do not respond to numerous communication attempts and who appear to have resources to pay based on credit records or employment status. CHS also said its hospitals sue a small fraction of the patients they treat each year. "Before initiating legal proceedings, our hospitals make repeated attempts to contact patients — often ten times or more — to communicate with them about their bill. Our hospitals do not sue patients we know can't pay for their care — but they must rely on these patients to engage with them to demonstrate their financial status," CHS said. CHS also said it doesn't litigate against patients who lost their jobs due to the pan- demic and that, under a policy adopted earlier in 2021, it would withdraw lawsuits against anyone earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The hospital system said it encourages any individual who is a defendant in a debt collection suit who had a change in financial status due to COVID-19 or is a fit for its updated financial assistance policy to contact CHS. n Jefferson Health ends policy linking bonuses to patient fundraising referrals By Alia Paavola P hiladelphia-based Jefferson Health has dropped a policy that linked some physician bonuses to patient referrals to its fundraising office, according to a May 7 report by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jefferson Health said the decision to link referrals to bonus pay was a "mod- est incentive for departmental chairs" and was done to "advance the culture of philanthropy." The health system also said it was modeled after other medical organizations. After some internal feedback, Jefferson Health said it will drop the incentive component in the policy. The reversal comes after physicians at Jefferson Health said in February they were being asked to refer at least one patient per month to the fundraising office and that the referrals would affect the size of their annual bonus. n • How UnitedHealth plans to make Optum a $100B business By Ayla Ellison U nitedHealth Group bought its first medical practice 15 years ago and now aims to make providing health- care its next $100 billion business, accord- ing to Insider. UnitedHealth Group's OptumCare busi- ness comprises 56,000 physicians and 1,600 clinics, and it's on track to add at least 4,000 affiliated, contracted and employed physi- cians this year. OptumCare is the bulk of a business unit called OptumHealth, and ex- ecutives are aiming to grow it from a $40 billion business to a $100 billion one by 2028, according to the report. OptumHealth CEO Wyatt Decker, MD, told Insider that moving physicians into "value-based" arrangements and away from fee-for-service care is one way the business will grow revenue. He said physicians will be paid to keep patients healthy rather than billing health plans for every patient visit or test. "We're paid to keep people healthy and well, which is what most people want," Dr. Deck- er told Insider. "When you begin to pencil out the math, as we move people into val- ue-based arrangements, that will be a major driver of how we'll move to a $100 billion book of business." OptumCare is also investing in virtual care. It has deployed a virtual care platform called Optum Virtual Care across all 50 states. With the offering, the goal is to in- tegrate care provided at brick-and-mortar clinics with virtual care, home care and be- havioral care, executives said during Unit- edHealth's first-quarter earnings call. OptumCare is a fast-growing business for UnitedHealth, and it has deals in the works to continue that growth. e com- pany announced in March that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Atrius Health, a 715-physician group based in Newton, Mass. n

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