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But at least a dozen of the “heroes” that UAMS featured in online advertisements and other videos weren’t just employed by the university – they’ve also been sued by it.

UAMS, Arkansas’ flagship public health sciences university, has been aggressively suing thousands of former patients over medical debt in recent years, including hundreds of its own employees, a 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 investigation found.

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【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 reviewed court documents from thousands of UAMS lawsuits and identified more than 500 defendants who were listed as working for the university itself. The employees ranged from nurses and patient services associates to clinical technicians and lab workers to housekeepers and cooks.

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“I worked for them through Covid, and they’re still doing this to me,” she said. “This really shows they don’t care about their employees at all.”

UAMS, which is part of the state government and is Arkansas’ largest public employer, operates a major teaching hospital in the state capital of Little Rock and runs clinics around the state. Its legal practices, which have not been previously reported, are an example of how aggressive medical debt collection efforts aren’t limited to corporate, for-profit hospitals.

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In an interview, Patterson, the chancellor, said he hadn’t been aware of the number of employees UAMS was suing until 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 informed him, and said the university was evaluating changes to its collections policy. But he defended the lawsuits as important to the institution’s finances, especially at a time that it has faced budget shortfalls and layoffs.

“We can’t fulfill our mission if we’re not getting paid for the work that we do,” Patterson said, adding that the university provides free care to many low-income patients and “we don’t take legal action against people who can’t pay.”

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But the lawsuits had dramatic consequences for some defendants. Some patients declared bankruptcy after being sued by the university, and others, like Renee Russell, told 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 that the lawsuits and garnishments forced them to take on second jobs or cut down on food for their families.

“What they took from me was life-altering during a hard time,” said Russell, who was sued over about $3,000 in bills.

Berneta Haynes, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center who’s studied medical debt, said UAMS appeared to be using some of the industry’s “most egregious types of collections practices.”

“Hounding people for money, wage garnishments, seizure of bank accounts, all over minimal amounts of money… it feels draconian and cruel,” Haynes said. “This is why people end up avoiding necessary healthcare, because they don’t want to face the spiral of medical debt.”

In one of the university’s pandemic-era promotional videos, which features employees discussing the slogan “UAMS Strong,” a student recruitment director says that the phrase “means to me that we’re all in this together, that we’re supporting each other, that we’re lifting each other up.”

But the day before the video was posted to YouTube, the director was served with a lawsuit from her employer over $700 in unpaid medical bills. The university went on to garnish a portion of the very same wages it was paying her, according to court documents.

Her experience was hardly unique. In addition to the more than 500 current and former UAMS employees that 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 found had been sued, about 100 other defendants were listed as working at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, which is affiliated with UAMS. Those numbers are likely undercounts, as thousands of additional cases did not include employment information or did not have case documents available in Arkansas’ online court database.

Employees being sued told 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 they had gone to their employer for medical treatment either out of convenience or because of incentives in their insurance. UAMS’ health insurance programoffers employeeslower deductibles and copays if they go to UAMS doctors and facilities for their medical care instead of other in-network providers that aren’t part of the university.

Current UAMS employees – who asked to speak anonymously to avoid retaliation – said the cases against them were demoralizing and infuriating.

One nurse sued by UAMS worked long hours coordinating Covid care during the height ofdeadly surgesin case numbers. She remembered calling hospital after hospital trying to find beds for patients who needed to be intubated, knowing that if she couldn’t find them a spot, they would likely die.

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Getting sued after working through the worst of the pandemic was “a punch in the gut,” the nurse said. “We’re a revenue source, and if they don’t get their revenue, they sue us for it.”

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“It’s a crappy way to treat anybody, especially somebody who comes to work for you, working their butt off during Covid,” she said. “Just the humiliation of it, and feeling like they don’t really have your back, it hurts.”

How to Invest in Financial Technology Stocks Elite Stock Group ✌️【Flexible Income】✌️ Free stock selection services backed by expert predictions. Our advanced analytics and real-time market data will help you stay ahead of the competition and make smart, profitable investment decisions. Some employees were making annual salaries of about $30,000 or less when they were sued, according tofinancial records.

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“Y’all say you’re for the people, but how am I going to survive when you’re taking hundreds of dollars out of my paycheck?” she asked.

On the other end of the pay spectrum, a handful of the defendants were doctors, professors or departmental leaders. The university sued its chief of pediatric emergency medicine over nearly $2,000 in medical bills in 2021. He resigned his job in the following months to take a position elsewhere – but UAMS still garnished a portion of his last paycheck, according to court records.

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Patterson, the chancellor, said UAMS hadn’t previously received complaints from employees about the collections process, but that “it breaks my heart” to hear some of what workers told 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 about being sued. He said that the university had recently convened a working group to evaluate its billing and collections policies and make recommendations for changes.

“We don’t like to think about pursuing legal action for anybody,” he said. “And we’re very interested in finding ways in which we can accomplish the same goal without having to resort to legal action.”

For years, UAMS only filed a few dozen medical debt lawsuits annually. But that changed in 2019, as the university pursued cost savings and partnered with a new debt collection firm – and the numbers skyrocketed during the pandemic.

In 2021, UAMS filed more than 3,000 lawsuits – nearly 100 times the number it filed five years earlier.

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UAMS first began paying Mid-South during its 2019 fiscal year, according to financial records – the same time the number of lawsuits jumped. Since then, it’s paid the company more than $3.1 million. In addition to collections, Mid-South also provides UAMS other services such as patient communications and insurance verification, according to acontract bid. Dowler and Mid-South’s president declined to comment on the lawsuits.

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In recent years, the university has seesawed between a stronger and weaker financial picture. It recentlyannouncedplans to lay off 51 employees amid a $30 million deficit. But in its 2021 fiscal year, UAMSrecordedits highest increase in net position in more than a decade, thanks in part to federal Covid-related funds – and it still sued thousands of people.

Patterson said that UAMS does not collect debt owed by patients with a household income less than 200% of thefederal poverty level– a total of about $60,000 for a family of four – or people who are unemployed or on Medicaid or Medicare. Each year, he said, the university writes off about $100 million in medical care for people who can’t afford to pay. And people who are not eligible for free care can set up payment plans to avoid lawsuits, in some cases paying as little as $5 or $10 per month, he said.

But those policies are not publicized anywhere on the university’s website. While UAMS has postedan applicationfor financial assistance, some of the patients sued told 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】 they don’t remember being informed about the possibility of receiving financial assistance or being encouraged to apply.

In contrast, UAMS’ largest competitor in Little Rock, Baptist Health Medical Center, has posted detailedonline policiesoffering free care to families whose income is less than 300% of the federal poverty level, with exceptions based on assets. Baptist also lays out a litany ofrequirementsand income checks that must take place before any collections lawsuit is filed.

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“UAMS was 1000% on our side,” she remembered, citing their flexibility with bills and the hospital social worker who helped her apply for financial benefits. “I could just cry, they helped me so much.”

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Even though she had been making regular payments on a previous UAMS payment plan, Saettele said, the university still sued her over several outstanding bills totaling $295. After attorneys and court fees, she owed $525, part of which the hospital garnished from Saettele’s bank account after winning a default judgment.

“It just broke my heart because they had been so good to us,” Saettele said. “I had such good care and felt so safe with them – and now I don’t.”

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UAMS added hundreds of dollars of attorneys and court fees onto the hospital bills in its court complaints. After winning judgments, the university earned interest on the amount owed at rates that in some cases reached 9% each year.

“Those fees were horrible,” said Tonya Dixon, who was sued over about $1,000 in bills after giving birth to her son Lukas at UAMS. The amount she owed rose above $1,500 after attorney and court fees. “I told them, there’s no need to get a lawyer, I’m willing to pay you. But nobody listened.”

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But in some cases, UAMS sued over debts that were three or four years old, because that statute of limitations doesn’t apply to the state government.

In one case, after the hospital sued a patient in June 2022 for medical treatment she received in March 2019, the defendant objected that the statute of limitations had passed. UAMS’ attorney, Tim Cullen, responded by citing an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling and wrote that “Plaintiff is an arm of the State of Arkansas. The statute of limitations does not run against the state.” The judge ruled in the university’s favor, and Cullen moved to garnish the defendant’s wages from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Patterson said the university’s policy is to be transparent with patients about their bills and that defendants should have received plenty of notice before it gets to a lawsuit. “If people are being sued without understanding that they have unpaid bills, that’s of course too aggressive, that’s not our process,” he said.

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In 2021, UAMS sued Renee Russell for about $3,200 over a medical bill for treatment of her diverticulitis, plus more than $800 in attorney and court fees. The hospital garnished part of Russell’s wages from a dog grooming business, which she said had already dropped dramatically due to the pandemic.

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【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】’s Curt Devine and Ashley Killough contributed to this report. Student journalist Emily Kennard also contributed for 【 - Free Best Performing Stock Alerts 】.

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