WCSO: Overdue Ballad Health bills paid in full | WJHL

JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. (WJHL) — Washington County, Tennessee officers on Tuesday introduced that the as soon as $2 million of unpaid medical bills from Ballad Health are thought-about paid off.

A launch from county leaders revealed Sheriff Keith Sexton and Mayor Joe Grandy negotiated with Ballad officers, slashing the more-than-$2-million invoice in half and permitting the county to pay the bills in full. A remaining value of $478,515 was agreed upon, in accordance with the discharge.

“The Mayor and I made this mess a priority to clean up,” Sexton acknowledged in the discharge. “Considering where we started, this is a fair settlement for the services that were provided by Ballad.”

Current county leaders claimed that former Sheriff Ed Graybeal’s administration did not ahead the invoices to be paid — with a number of the bills relationship again to 2018.

“Overall, I am pleased with the settlement, and appreciative of the amount of time and effort the Sheriff’s Office and Ballad put in to helping us look at medical bills that were several years old,” mentioned Grandy. “This is a resolution that shows when you all sit down in an environment of partnership, you can to come to an amicable solution.”

Months of negotiation efforts started final November when Ballad Health knowledgeable the incoming sheriff of an excellent inmate medical invoice — the identical day Sexton was later sworn into the function on the twenty second of that month. Previously, former Chief Deputy and later Interim Sheriff Leighta Laitinen crammed the sneakers of Graybeal, who retired from the place over a yr earlier than his time period was set to finish.

The five-page November letter from Ballad claimed that the discover adopted “a multitude of unsuccessful calls, letters and meetings to resolve the matter.”

“According to Ballad officials, neither the former Chief Deputy nor former Jail Administrator responded to requests from the healthcare group to negotiate payment,” Sexton mentioned. “On top of that, the County’s accounting office never received the invoices nor knew anything was past due to Ballad.”

The launch states that regardless of a “three year lapse in payment,” Ballad didn’t deny emergency or outpatient care to any inmates on the Washington County Detention Center.

Laitinen, nevertheless, advised News Channel 11 that it had been she and her staff who negotiated the invoice down and referred to the excellent bills as a miscommunication.

“We were not getting the bills; they were going directly to the contract medical company,” Laitinen mentioned in a earlier interview. “[Ballad was] not sending them to us. When we found that out, that’s when Ballad Health called us and said, ‘You all owe us $2 million.’”

Sexton first introduced the information to mild at a press conference in March.

News Channel 11 has reached out to Ballad Health for an announcement concerning the finished negotiations of the medical bills.