Apparently the light snacks and semi-cool bottles of water weren’t enough to bring them in.
A few days after 9Wants to Know publicly challenged executives from Colorado’s major medical providers to come to the station to personally review the dozens of billing complaints we’ve received, our conference room remained conspicuously void of hospital executives.
I don’t suppose producer Katie Wilcox and I were terribly surprised.
Hospitals had repeatedly denied our requests for on-camera interviews for months.
Apparently talking, on-the-record and on camera, about the day-to-day billing habits of the state’s preeminent medical providers just isn’t something that happens.
We started showusyourbills@9news.com more than a year ago to help us get a better idea of what patients across the state are dealing with when it comes to medical billing practices.
Hundreds of bills later, it’s clear more than a few of you are upset with your bills. We plan on airing more stories soon – with or without on-camera interviews with the hospitals. (Although, we’re far from giving up on that front).
Curiously, however, we did at least get a new response from the hospital systems we’ve repeatedly sought on-camera interviews with.
A few hours before we opened our conference room (filled with the light snacks and semi-cool water), a woman showed up in our lobby with a yellow envelope.
It simply read: “9News c/o Chris Vanderveen Katie Wilcox”
Apparently, UCHealth, SCL, HealthONE, and Centura all got together and penned this statement to us. Of course, we can’t exactly ask follow-up questions to the statement, but we can at least let you take a look at it yourself:
Hospital meeting response by Erin Powell on Scribd
One more note. Today we did receive word from a representative from UCHealth that he would soon be willing to talk to us on camera.
He just couldn’t make our impromptu open house.
We’re ok with that.
As for our requests of the other hospitals, the invitation still stands.
We might even bring a few more light snacks.
