Months after suspending its policy of withholding care from patients with certain amounts of medical debt, a healthcare provider in Minnesota has announced it has formally ended the policy, less than a week after the Attorney General of Minnesota announced it was investigating the provider.
Allina Health, a nonprofit healthcare company that operates 100 hospitals and clinics across Minnesota and Wisconsin, sprung into the spotlight this summer after a published report revealed the provider’s policy of canceling appointments and refusing to see individuals who owed the facility at least $4,500. While Allina did treat individuals who had exceeded that threshold in its emergency rooms, other services were cut off, including those for children and individuals with chronic conditions like depression and diabetes.
The policy was originally put into place back in 2006 and remained in effect until this year.
Individuals were prevented from scheduling appointments and getting prescriptions refilled, and were completely cut off until they made arrangements to repay whatever they owed.
The issue, according to the AG of Minnesota, is that the provider did not do enough to educate its patients about potentially being eligible for charity care or other financial assistance options that may have been available to them. As a nonprofit organization, it is required too provide services to the community through offering free or reduced-cost care to patients with low incomes.
After initially defending the policy, saying patients were only cut off after repeated attempts to work out solutions for the unpaid debts, Allina announced it was suspending the policy, before officially rescinding it. A spokeswoman for Allina said that it re-examined the policy and determined that there were “opportunities to engage our clinical teams and technology differently to provide financial assistance resources for patients who need this support,” according to a published report
