Ok we all know collection folks put employees on pay for performance or they
get a bonus but this went a little too far. We already know they were in trouble for their past practice of showing actual patient records to investors on Wall Street and that was uncovered over due to a lost notebook. This is where the Killer Algorithms come in to play as they sell hospitals on what kind of return they can have in revenue by using their services. Business analytics on steroids violating humans ethics is what we have here.
Accretive Health Debt Collector Employee Has Laptop Stolen With Non Encrypted Patient Data from 2 Hospitals And Had Access to All the Data Via Revenue Cycling - Patient Information Was Shared With Wall Street Investors – Algorithms For Profit Again?
Every time you think it can’t get worse, it does as people were getting turned away as they wanted money up front before treatment. Doctors complained about it. When you read the one employee’s comment about 
more money out there, well here speaks pay for performance. There’s a time and place for incentives and this at bedside and harassing patients is not the place. One employee sounded scared they would get fired too so it sounds like we had some negative threats here too.
I keep telling all to look at the math and the formulas and you have the whole story and how far will some go. These folks were brutal. Last year we had these folks running some bad algorithms…wake up folks..algorithms have teeth and grade and rate you and sadly you treated badly if those numbers are low. We don’t’ have enough trained people that know “how” to work with analytics and employees sometimes think one little glitch on a screen is bad, well heck we have so many analytics running, everyone at least one glitch. Med Solutions shut their site down over their analytics activities when caught.
Med Solutions and Blue Cross Caught On the Stress Test Denial Algorithm (video)
If you need some additional real life examples see the 20 some links I have compiled below with every day events with bad math and formulas that deny and create flawed data. BD
Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–How Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You–Updated 3-11-2012
ST. PAUL, Minn.—An Illinois medical debt collection company routinely pressured patients in Minnesota hospitals to pay for services before treatment was given, going so far as to collect at a patient's bedside and in some cases leading patients to decide to skip treatment, according to a report from the Minnesota attorney general.
The allegations are detailed in a six-volume report released by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson as part of a lawsuit she filed in January against Chicago-based Accretive Health Inc., which has contracts with two Minnesota hospital operations. The report accuses Accretive of misusing private patient information and creating "high-pressure, boiler room-style sales atmospheres" in which employees were coached to aggressively collect debt
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/04/25/minn_ag_cites_accretive_for_debt_tactics/
No comments:
Post a Comment