Arkansas’ public university hospital has sued thousands of patients over medical bills during the pandemic, including hundreds of its own nurses and employees

Watch “Erin Burnett Out Front” tonight at 7 p.m. ET for more on this story.



CNN
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As Covid cases spread in 2020, visitors to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences were greeted by a colorful sign put up by grateful neighbors outside the university’s medical center: “Heroes Work Here.”

The university adopted the message in glossy promotional videos it posted online, introducing viewers to individual nurses, doctors, and health workers who described their jobs. “Sometimes it’s easy for people who pass through here to see our frontline caregivers as the heroes, or our educators as the heroes – it’s really everybody,” Cam Patterson, the university chancellor, declared in one video. 

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 CNN investigation found. 

Since 2019, UAMS has sued more than 8,000 patients to collect on unpaid medical bills, according to court records. It filed more debt collection lawsuits in recent years than any other plaintiff in the Arkansas court system other than the state tax office.

The university’s use of the courts ballooned during the coronavirus pandemic. It filed 35 lawsuits in 2016 but more than 3,000 in 2021 – an average of nearly nine a day.

CNN 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.

Twenty people sued by UAMS, including more than a dozen current or former employees, spoke to CNN about their cases. Keri Whimper, a former UAMS medical assistant, said the university’s lawsuit against her – demanding a total of about $700 for a bill she thought had been covered by insurance – felt like a betrayal after she contracted Covid while working at the medical center.

“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.

Most of the lawsuits UAMS filed in recent years involved unpaid medical bills of about $1,000 or less, with some cases over as little as $100. In its complaints, the university tacked on hundreds of dollars of court filing fees, attorney fees, service fees, and interest charges, sometimes doubling or tripling the original amount owed. It moved to garnish defendants’ wages

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Nurses and wellness care workers at 15 Sutter facilities to keep one-working day strike for protected staffing and well being and security protections

Far more than 8,000 registered nurses and health and fitness care employees are taking part in the strike.

Nurses and wellbeing treatment workers at 15 services throughout Northern California will hold a a single-working day strike on April 18 to protest Sutter Health’s refusal to tackle their proposals about protected staffing and health and safety protections, announced California Nurses Association (CNA), an affiliate of Countrywide Nurses United, and CNA affiliate Caregivers and Health care Personnel Union (CHEU) nowadays.

This see follows nearly unanimous strike authorization votes in March. Nurses and overall health care staff have specified progress observe to Sutter Health and fitness for the strike. Much more than 8,000 registered nurses and overall health treatment workers are collaborating in the strike.

Sutter Overall health RNs and overall health treatment personnel have been in negotiations given that June 2021 for a new agreement, with minor to no motion on vital difficulties. They urge administration to invest in nursing workers and concur to a agreement that presents:

  • protected staffing that enables nurses to give safe and sound and therapeutic treatment and
  • pandemic readiness protections that demand the hospitals to spend in private protective machines stockpiles and comply with California’s PPE stockpile law.

“The Sutter nurses voted for this strike,” claimed Renee Waters, a Trauma Neuro Intense Care RN with 26 several years of encounter. “We are putting mainly because Sutter is not transparent about the stockpile of PPE materials and get in touch with tracing. They resist possessing nurses specifically included in scheduling and implementation of procedures that have an affect on all of us throughout a pandemic. We need to address these problems and extra. A good agreement is necessary to keep expert nurses, have ample staffing and education, and guarantee we have the means we have to have to give risk-free and helpful treatment for our individuals. Nurses are battling back towards Sutter placing earnings ahead of individuals and overall health care workers.”

  • Who: Registered nurses and health treatment staff at 15 Sutter facilities
  • What: Just one-working day strike for protected staffing and well being and safety protections
  • When: Monday, April 18, 7 a.m. to Tuesday, April 19, 6:59 a.m. (see picket moments under).
  • Where by: See beneath for checklist of facilities and areas

“Nurses overwhelmingly voted to go out on strike simply because we see no other possibility still left for us and our people,” explained Amy Erb, RN , who performs in Critical Care at California Pacific Health-related Heart. “We have experimented with frequently to deal with the persistent and common dilemma of small staffing that brings about delays in care and perhaps puts sufferers at danger, but medical center administrators carry on to disregard us. We have a ethical and legal obligation to advocate for our patients. We advocate for them at the bedside, at the bargaining desk, and if we have to, on the strike line.”

Nurses and overall health care personnel will be picketing from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.

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A nurse’s death becomes a rallying cry for health workers’ mental health : Shots

Close friends Joshua Paredes, Michael Walujo and John LeBlanc are working together to set up a crisis help line for nurses following the suicide of their friend Michael Odell in January.

Rachel Bujalski for NPR


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Rachel Bujalski for NPR


Close friends Joshua Paredes, Michael Walujo and John LeBlanc are working together to set up a crisis help line for nurses following the suicide of their friend Michael Odell in January.

Rachel Bujalski for NPR

On the morning of January 18, Joshua Paredes came home to an empty apartment. His roommate and good friend Michael Odell wasn’t there, but there was a giant bag of Skittles, Odell’s favorite snack, on the dog bed.

Paredes, who has two dogs, texted his friend. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, how many Skittles were in here? Just so I know what’s going on with the dogs.'”

They were both working as nurses – Paredes at the University of California, San Francisco hospital and Odell at Stanford Health Care – and initially, Paredes didn’t think much of his friend’s absence, since he typically came home a little later.

When he didn’t hear back, and Odell didn’t answer his call either, Paredes looked for his friend’s location on his phone – they shared locations with each other. It showed him on a highway that he never took to come home.

“So I kind of realized something was weird,” says Paredes.

He then called his friend’s workplace and learned that Odell had left work around 4:30 a.m. to get something from his car. But he never came back.

Paredes started calling Odell’s other friends to raise the alert.

“When I found out that he left mid-shift, my first thought was he’s in crisis,” says John LeBlanc, a nurse at UCSF, and a good friend of Paredes and Odell. “Because it’s totally, completely out of character for him.”

Two days later, after a search by friends, volunteers and the police, the authorities found Odell’s body. While the investigation into his death is still ongoing, the evidence points to suicide. He was 27 years old.

Michael Odell, a critical care nurse, had spent the past two years traveling between assignments in California and Minnesota. In December, he started a stint with Stanford in the midst of the Omicron surge.

Joshua Paredes


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Joshua Paredes


Michael Odell, a critical care nurse, had spent the past two years traveling between assignments in California and Minnesota. In December, he started a stint with Stanford in the midst of the Omicron surge.

Joshua Paredes

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

A wake-up call

For Odell’s group of close friends, his death was crushing.

“It’s been hard,” says Michael Walujo, a critical care nurse at Stanford, and a close friend who traveled with Odell for several

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Victorian health service can fire nurses who refuse Covid vaccine, court rules | Health

An injunction to end Victoria’s biggest community wellbeing assistance from firing nurses who are refusing the Covid-19 vaccination or refusing to disclose their vaccination position has been thrown out by the federal courtroom ahead of a trial tough the vaccine mandate.

Nick Ferrett QC is representing about 90 nurses at Monash Health and fitness, and informed the courtroom on Wednesday that under Victoria’s Occupational Wellbeing and Security Act, the nurses should be consulted before any disciplinary motion is taken against them.

“There’s no suggestion that any of the … related personnel … is dogmatic about vaccines, and unwilling in all circumstances to get vaccinated,” Ferrett stated. “So session has price in people situations.”

A directive from Victoria’s main overall health officer less than the General public Overall health Act will make it apparent that health and fitness staff need to be totally vaccinated, obtaining gained at minimum their initial Covid-19 vaccine dose by 29 Oct, in get to operate in a health care placing. They have to offer evidence of vaccination to their employer.

But Justice John Snaden mentioned there was “no evidence” that Monash Well being was hoping to reduce nurses from doing exercises their place of work rights by commencing disciplinary action to hearth them.

“On the contrary, the proof that there is incredibly significantly implies that the training course that has been plotted has been plotted since Monash Health and fitness has formed the see that under the community wellbeing directions by which it is certain, they’re not permitted to do something else [other than terminate employment],” he mentioned.

Ferrett argued whether or not Monash Overall health experienced commenced the disciplinary motion mainly because employees had been asserting their legal rights and pushing to be consulted need to be explored at trial.

But Snaden mentioned the nurses “… cannot stage to nearly anything in the way of evidence that substantiates their contention”.

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“The pertinent personnel sustain that they should to have been consulted about the vaccination route and that the disciplinary action to which they are imminently to be subjected will be visited upon them due to the fact they possessed, and or, sought to exercising that correct to be consulted,” he reported.

“It appears extremely not likely, potentially even difficult on the material that has been submitted to date, that the applicants will be capable to succeed in their assert that they have been or will soon be the victims of adverse motion since or for causes that incorporate that they have possessed or exercised place of work rights, or due to the fact Monash Health and fitness wishes to avert them from performing exercises any this kind of ideal.

“That of class presupposes that they in reality do have this kind of a suitable or rights. That will be a reside query at trial.”

Chris O’Grady QC, representing Monash Wellness, reported the employer had only been following the chief wellness officer’s directions.

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