Hospital System to Refund Poor Patients Who Were Entitled to Free Care

One of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital chains, Providence, will refund payments made by more than 700 low-income patients who were wrongly charged for medical care that should have been free.

The patients qualified for Medicaid, the government health insurance for people with low incomes, but were nonetheless billed for health care and then referred to debt-collection firms. The practice was the result of a program, known as Rev-Up, that was designed to maximize revenues by wringing as much money as possible from patients — even those whose incomes were so low they should never have been billed at all.

Rev-Up, which Providence created with the help of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, was the subject of a New York Times investigation last month.

Providence began reaching out to the patients in late September, weeks after The Times asked the hospital system to comment on its billing and debt-collection practices, according to Melissa Tizon, a spokeswoman for Providence. She said the hospital system, which is not disclosing the total amount of money it is refunding, had been planning to issue the refunds for months.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/business/providence-hospital-poor-patients.html