The love fest between Yale-New Haven and its erstwhile critics continued Thursday, as Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (at left in photo) showered compliments on the hospital at a press conference for its new approach to handling the bills of patients unable to pay.
The hospital used to say the patients whose bills were sent to collection agencies were unwilling to pay, and in those days Blumenthal was not so complimentary. He sued YNHH over several issues related to free care (or lack thereof) and its Scrooge-like demands for payment, which included wage garnishment and attaching liens to homes.
The love fest began two weeks ago when the city and the hospital reached a deal on how to proceed with a proposed $430 million cancer center. Prior to that, local lawmakers and activists as well as Blumenthal had battled with the hospital over its record on its approach to low-income patients. (Last November Blumenthal came to New Haven to blast the hospital on this same issue.)
Hospital president and CEO Marna Borgstrom (at right in the photo above) and the AG jointly called the news conference to let the public know that Borgstrom had complied last December with his request to cancel 18,000 bills more than two years old. The new news is that YNHH has gone the extra step of notifying three major credit rating agencies on behalf of 3,500 of those patients who found themselves facing legal troubles as a result of those unpaid bills (which the agencies presumably didn’t know had been forgiven by the hospital). She said she couldn’t provide a dollar amount of the cancelled bills.
Blumenthal (pictured) began his comments by announcing that “Yale New Haven is unmatched in the quality of care it provides,” then went on to say, “The hospital’s leadership is a model for responsible and compassionate action for its patients, especially its neediest patients.”
He called the decision to cancel the bills “courageous.” He said for those 3,500 individuals, “Repairing their credit reports may be as significant as repairing their health was.”
Borgstrom said the hospital is committed to providing free care for eligible patients and discounted care for families who make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $80,000. She added that Yale New Haven is no longer using collection agencies.
Blumenthal acknowledged that still to be settled is a lawsuit against the hospital regarding the criteria by which free care is provided, and how patients are informed of its availability. But he said, “Yale has changed those procedures, and that will be reflected in the discussion we are having.”
