Hospital Forgives Medical Debt For 90 Year Old

A Colorado hospital forgave over $21,000 in medical debt for a local 90 year resident. Despite all the stories we hear bashing health care providers, a story where a hospital shows compassion is a welcome change of pace.

My client, Liz, owed a local hospital for services received in 2008 as a result of an accident. Liz was not eligible for Medicare, and had private insurance. After admittance to the hospital on an emergency basis, she remained there for rehabilitation treatment. Her claims were paid at out of network level, leaving her with significant balances owed. While she made small monthly payments, she never really understood why she owed all that she did and how she got into this mess.

Liz had no family to help her and lives in downtown Denver. When she called me, she pleaded with me to come down to Denver and meet with her to help her, as she was very confused about all of her medical bills. I made the trip from Loveland to Denver and sat down with her at a local McDonald's restaurant (she told me her kitchen table in her apartment was not big enough to spread out the papers). She entered the restaurant very slowly, using a wheeled walker. As I spoke with her and looked through all of the piles of bills, I was amazed at how bright and sharp and intelligent her blue eyes were, as she seemed to understand most of what I was saying, and was able to intelligently answer my questions. Needless to say, I was impressed with her and I certainly felt compassion for her circumstances. She wanted to do what was right, and pay her fair share, but the weight of these large bills were more than she could handle.

I wrote a well thought out letter to the hospital, petitioning them to forgive Liz's debt, and providing a rationale for why I felt that they do this. The amazing thing: I received a prompt reply from them. They agreed to bring all of her accounts out of collection, and reduce them to a zero balance, for both the hospital and for the physicians amounts owed.

What a wonderful outcome and phone call it was for me to call Liz and inform her of this great news. Imagine her relief to no longer have this burden. And, it is encouraging that the hospital administration truly do have a heart.

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Hospital Business Offices and Healthcare Consumers

A recent study by a company that addresses healthcare office cash flow trends came up with some interesting findings on the consumer impact of hospital services, particularly billing. It suggests the vital role the "back office" operations as they are called, play in keeping patients satisfied. In addition to billing and collection, these activities include accounting, customer service, medical billing and coding and troubleshooting patient issues.

The number of consumers who gave top scores (5 on a 1 to 5 Likert scale) to hospital billing processes was just 21%. Good health made a difference in perceptions. Those who enjoy good health are more likely to be satisfied with business office processes with 52% of them giving high marks on their experiences. Those self-assessing fair or poor health were 39% more likely to rate the processes a 2 or less, with only 15% saying a 5. Time away from discharge also made a difference. Satisfaction with the overall hospital experience was 32% at the time of discharge and 22% post-discharge and after business office processes. Another consumer trend is that complaints about collection agency activity have reached an all time high. In fact, according to the Federal Trade Commission 2011 Annual Report, there were 140,036 complaints about debt collector practices compared to 119,609 in 2009. Medical debt is a primary driver of this.

These results suggest that there is a lot of room for improvement regarding office procedures and how they relate to the healthcare consumer, especially in the medical bill and claim resolution process.

One of the reasons for the growing awareness of business office practices by healthcare consumers is deductible creep. According to recent data deductibles have increased dramatically over the last two years.

For example, high deductible health plans and savings accounts (as of January 2011) cover 11.4 million lives. A year earlier, that number was 10 million and in 2009, it was 8 million.

Plus, the deductible amounts for workers enrolled in PPOs with single coverages increased 21% over three years from $560 to $675.

These and the other numbers suggest a trend. It points to commercial revenue that was considered high-recovery now being assumed with patient self pay bills. Historically, this is tougher to collect. And as indicated above, this aspect also influences potentially negative customer feelings about the whole medical experience, particularly the medical center business offices that bear the administrative responsibilities of the medical practices. This includes medical records, billing and collections.

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How The Hospital Payment Processing Really Works

Hospital Billing

There is no doubt that everyone feels a real jitter and have butterflies in their tummy whenever they visit a hospital either for a planned check up or even during emergencies. The jittery feeling is due to the worry about the hospital bills that they will be facing. It is never an easy task or a layman to calculate approximately what the hospital billing would look like. Most of the times you will feel that the billing done by the hospital are expensive and a bit confusing too. There are plenty of staff in the hospital at the billing section who are trained to help you out know how the billing has been calculated and what are all included in the bill.

Electronic Billing And Payments

Medical billing and hospital payment processing is a fast developing and growing field and it has become a norm in most of the countries all across the globe. As there are rapid advancements in technology, there are also vast improvements in hospital payment processing methods. Now, all the bills pertaining to a patient are filed as hard copies in single folder and are mailed to the insurance provider through e-mail. There are plenty of software that are available that will allow in carrying out the hospital billing on the computer. There are plenty of coding software that are available these days that will help in quick and accurate processing of bills and will also be less time consuming.

There are a lot of hospitals that now accept credit or debit cards from patients and this is considered one of the easiest hospital payment processing method that will save a lot of time both or the patient as well as the hospital. Everything will be done electronically once the patient's card is swiped in the electronic credit card reading machine. The request for issuing the payment pertaining to the bill has to be keyed in and once the bank authorizes the payment electronically, a payment slip will be generated by the machine and the bill amount will be transferred from the patient's account or bank to the hospital's bank account.

Payment From Patients

If the patient is not covered by any medical insurance, then the patient will be needed to pay the hospital amount in advance for planned admissions or during the check in time for emergency cases. Most hospitals all over the globe would accept cash, check, credit or debit cards and even money orders as payments. There are also hospitals that will be offering pay out plans by offering financial assistance to patients who are cash struck and do not have the full amount to pay or their treatment.

Conclusion

With all the latest technologies in place, hospital payment processing is not a difficult or tiresome job anymore. In fact, it has really eased the job and also provides the patients as well as the payment receiver hassle free payment processing which does not include any counting of liquid cash or writing of checks and so on. Everything is doe electronically and in a speedy manner that will save the time o the patients as well as the hospital staff.

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