Eric Starkman of Deadline Detroit offers a more complete picture of Corewell's outsourcing of some administrative functions:

https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/32849/starkman_corewell_health_ceo_tina_freese_decker_fires_186_michigan_workers_offshores_sensitive_patient_info_to_india

Starkman: Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker Fires 186 Michigan Workers, Offshores Sensitive Patient Info to India
By Eric Starkman - February 19, 2025

Most American CEOs these days are falling over themselves to kneel before President Trump and pledge their allegiance to his Make America Great Again agenda. Even Mary Barra, where under her watch GM became Mexico’s No. 1 vehicle assembler, now claims she’s “goal aligned” with Trump’s commitment to restoring the lost vitality of U.S. manufacturing.

There’s at least one prominent CEO exception, and she’s based in Michigan.

Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker defiantly has refused to feign support for Trump’s MAGA aspirations or let him interfere with her cost cutting efforts. Given that Freese Decker is also chair of the American Hospital Association, her anti-MAGA mindset is presumably representative of the healthcare industry, one that previously mounted legal challenges to Trump’s first-term efforts to foster more price competition and relieve patients of mounting hospital charges.

An estimated 186 employees who worked remotely and were responsible for Corewell’s billing and finance functions, last Thursday were ordered to attend a 10 a.m. Zoom meeting. Despite previous assurances their jobs were safe, the employees were told Friday would be their last day. Employees familiar with the firings said Corewell offered five weeks of severance, and agreed to continue benefits until the end of March.

The reason for the mass firings: Corewell is offshoring its billing and finance functions to AGSHealth, a company owned by the New York-based private equity firm Altaris Capital Partners. Corewell’s billing and finance employees were replaced by AGS workers in India.

Brutal employee firings are commonplace in Michigan, particularly at GM, where 1,600 mostly Michigan-based workers last year were fired by Barra, including a widely respected 38-year company veteran who was notified of his termination in an early morning email. Ford employees in 2022 learned that CEO Jim Farley was planning to fire 3,000 salaried workers reading this Bloomberg story.

Akasol, an electric vehicle battery maker, disclosed Tuesday it will end production in Michigan on April 14 and fire 188 workers in Warren and Hazel Park, despite receiving a much ballyhooed $2.2 million grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Privacy Issues

Corewell patients who are concerned about their privacy have good reason to be concerned about Freese Decker’s offshoring efforts. Employees in billing and finance have access to the most critical personal information, including patients’ social security numbers, their places of employments, their medical records, and other sensitive financial data.

“If I was a Corewell patient, I wouldn’t be comfortable if someone from another country was looking at my (private) information,” a fired Corewell worker told me.

Offshoring increases the risks of security breaches, which are commonplace in the healthcare industry.

In 2024, it is estimated that 42% of U.S. residents were victimized by healthcare security breaches. Michigan AG Dana Nessel has railed about the surge of healthcare information breaches, but has taken no meaningful steps to curb them other than to call for legislation requiring Michigan hospitals to inform her when their systems are compromised so she can issue a news release warning consumers.

Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a hospital’s IT system is only as secure as its weakest vendor. Patients of Corewell and Beaumont Health, the Southfield-based company that merged with Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health, had their privacy data compromised multiple times because of third-party vendors.

Philip Abraham, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in healthcare billing and finance, said he was dumbfounded that Corewell would offshore its billing functions, particularly given Trump’s efforts to stem the loss of American jobs being sent overseas.

“I’m shocked, shocked!” Abraham said when told of the Corewell firings. “This is beyond stupid. Why doesn’t (Tina Freese Decker) send a letter to Trump and (Robert F) Kennedy (Jr.) and say, ‘Why don’t you audit us?’”

Added Abraham, founder and president of Northville-based Brilliancy Deep Tech: “The last thing Corewell wants is Trump and RFK looking at Corewell.”

Robert Kennedy was recently confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Minimal savings

What’s telling is the relatively minimal savings Corewell appears to be realizing for assuming its offshoring risks. According to multiple employees, Corewell paid its billing and finance workers between $40,000 and $50,000 a year. All of them worked remotely, so there were no office overhead costs.

Even assuming all the employees were paid $50,000 a year, the total annual cost to support the workforce was $9.3 million. That’s less than the $10.2 million Corewell paid former Beaumont CEO John Fox to go away after he turned over his hospital system and its $4 billion reserve to Spectrum at no upfront cost to Spectrum.

Fox was also paid about $50 million for his seven years of leadership, under which Beaumont suffered significant reputational decline.

Corewell spokesman Mark Geary ignored my request for comment, as is his practice. The PR guru and former TV reporter previously shared in an email that he had a low opinion of me and regarded Deadline Detroit as decidedly inferior to Detroit’s major publications.

Delicious target

Corewell would make a particularly delicious target for Trump.

A responsible attorney general would never have allowed the merger to go through, given Beaumont’s significant issues under Fox, including the death of a patient undergoing a routine colonoscopy, and the closing of a Covid-designated hospital at the height of the pandemic.

AG Nessel allowed Spectrum to take over Beaumont without any performance or financial commitments, such as assurances that Beaumont’s $4 billion reserve wouldn’t be reallocated to Spectrum’s operations in western Michigan.

Medical staff at Corewell’s southeastern Michigan operations, the former Beaumont Health, have told me that conditions have worsened since Corewell took over, but Nessel has turned a blind eye, just as she did when a prominent lawyer warned her about dangerous conditions under Fox’s leadership.

The death of the colonoscopy patient happened a few months after the lawyer sent Nessel his warning letter.

Nessel gained national prominence and became a darling of the mainstream media in 2020, when she attacked Trump as a “petulant child who refuses to follow the rules” and garnered fawning stories like this puff piece published by NBC News.

In response, Trump dismissed Nessel as “Do Nothing Dana”, a label not without some merit.

Another reason Freese Decker could make for an attractive Trump target is her being 2025 chair of the American Hospital Association, a trade group representing mostly empty suits like herself focused on increasing profits, not patient care. Freese Decker has an MBA but no medical training.

Trump’s hospital pricing rule

Trump has never been given credit for his last administration’s initiative requiring hospitals to post their prices to foster more competition and allow patients to make more informed choices. The initiative imposed meaningful penalties on hospitals that didn’t comply, but the Biden Administration watered them down and did virtually nothing to impose them.

The AHA sued to prevent Trump’s rules, but lost in court. Many hospitals found additional ways to make it difficult for patients to find their pricing.

Union support opportunity

More than 9,700 Metro Detroit Corewell nurses recently voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the Teamsters, and the union is on record as saying it hopes to organize hospital nurses across Michigan. Organizing nurses said that Corewell’s management engaged in intimidation tactics, prompting them to file more than 800 protests with Joe Biden’s NLRB alleging unfair labor practices. The NLRB took no meaningful actions against Corewell’s management.

Trump has fashioned himself as a champion of American workers, except, of course, if they work for the federal government. Challenging Corewell’s labor practices could garner him favor with the Teamsters, whose leader Sean O’Brien refused to endorse his candidacy, despite the majority of his rank-and-file favoring Trump’s election.

UAW president Shawn Fain endorsed Kamala Harris, despite Trump wanting to impose tariffs on Mexican and Canada that could return GM, Ford, and Stellantis manufacturing jobs to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. Trump regards Fain as a “dope.” Fain has even less kind words about Trump.

It's well known that the U.S. healthcare industry is rife with corruption and conflicts. Philip Abraham, the cybersecurity and hospital billing expert, told me that he already has the systems and software in place that could wring tens of billions in price reductions he said U.S. hospital executives don’t want identified and exposed because they ultimately benefit from the waste.

“I hope (Elon) Musk and RFK get a hold of me,” said Abraham, who is ready to hit the ground running. “I have already documented all the suppliers and vendors and the software systems the hospital industry uses.”

The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.

Personal interview background from FOX 17.

Video omitted due to length, but available at the link.

https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/former-employee-191-corewell-health-employees-medical-billers-fired

Former employee: 191 Corewell Health employees, medical billers fired

 

By: Julie Dunmire   |    Feb 25, 2025

(WXMI) — FOX 17 spoke with a former employee of Corewell Health, who says they were fired along with 190 other employees on Valentine's Day.

The former employee tells FOX 17 that they were told at 9:45 a.m. to get on a 10 a.m. Zoom call. That's when they got the news.

The former employee said most of the people fired were medical billers who worked remotely. The jobs, they said, were moved overseas.

The former employee tells FOX 17 they were given seven weeks' pay and insurance through the end of March. They said some other employees fired were given two weeks' pay, while others received five weeks' pay.

Corewell Health issued FOX 17 the following statement:

“Like health systems across the country, we have made some staffing changes in some non-patient facing, administrative roles. These changes will help us continue to provide high-quality care for the long term in a challenging economic environment for health care. We are grateful for the contributions and service provided by our team members.”

FOX 17 spoke with Fettig Jobs about sudden loss of employment.

“First, that’s a really tough position to be in. When you don’t have work, and a lot of people can have their work define them as a person. And I’d say first, realize that it doesn’t define you,” Mike Fettig, president of Fettig Jobs, said.

Fettig offered job-search advice, including updating your resume and making sure your resume contains key words that may be used in the job search.