Business Week: Hospitals X-Ray Patient Credit Scores

[rainbow4321]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110080413532.htm?chan=magazine+channel_what%27s+next

In the hospital business they call it a "wallet biopsy." A growing number of medical centers are using sophisticated software that digs into patients' finances to help determine whether they will receive free or discounted care.

The procedure, which is not understood by most patients or even many doctors, generally doesn't come into play when there is an emergency. But it has raised eyebrows for several reasons: Hospital administrators are looking at patient data—credit scores, credit-card limits, and 401(k) balances—not usually associated with treatment decisions.

Debbie Maupin, 41, already has felt the procedure's sting. The Dallas resident fractured her skull, neck, and back in a car crash in April 2005. Parkland Health & Hospital System gave her free care worth more than $100,000 because her job as a mortgage adviser offered no health insurance. When she returned in June 2006 for a scheduled CAT scan, however, Parkland told her she no longer qualified as a charity case "because my credit score was too high," she says. A hospital financial counselor, she adds, refused to show her a copy of her credit report. Unable to work because of her injuries, she says she's "living off borrowed money from my father and friends, I have nothing in the bank." She never got the scan.

Parkland, a nonprofit that operates 11 medical facilities in the Dallas area, uses patient financial-analysis software provided by SearchAmerica in Maple Grove, Minn., one of the numerous data-mining companies around the country that have signed up hospitals as clients. Beth Keating, Parkland's patient financial-services manager, says the hospital has no record of Maupin's reapplying for charity care in 2006. Keating says Parkland analyzes credit scores when deciding who can afford to pay for care. But the chain's policy is not to mention the scores to its patients, Keating says, and Parkland wouldn't rely solely on a credit score in choosing whether to provide free service. "We are very generous in our charity care, giving over $100 million in free care last year," she adds.

[readmoreoften]

1. The invisible hand of the market is at work...

and it's flippin' us all the bird.

[ecstatic]

2. damned if you do, damned if you don't nt

[Cleita]

3. It gets worse and worser doesn't it?

When you think you have a handle on all privateering profiteers, they find another niche to mine meaning in this case, they don't have to give that much charity anymore.

[silverojo]

4. So now it's a GOOD thing that my credit is in the toilet?

Good grief!

[rainbow4321]

7. Oh, it's get better....look at the rest of the article/patient stories

There are other hospitals asking people why are they not dipping into their 401k funds to pay.. seems they can pull their 401k balances up in their funding search system, also. Screw your retirment or kids' education funding, you want treatment, hand it over.

[RC]

5. This makes a good case for Universal Health Care.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. I second that. nt