March 18, 2008
Your vitals: blood pressure, pulse, credit score
The Health Blog has a post about how credit scores are becoming the new vital sign in health care:
To figure out which patients are likely to pay their bills and which ones are best written off as charity cases, hospitals are peering into patients’ financial records.
Some are using traditional credit scores that are used for things like car loans and mortgages. Others are buying reports specially tailored to predict the likelihood that a patient will pay a big medical bill....
The Wall Street Journal has the original story.
The Journal also says that some hospitals are checking credit at the door while others wait for the final bill to be tallied. Also, a new 'health care credit score' is being developed so hospitals can better target collection efforts. From the Journal:
[Orlando Regional Healthcare] figures there's little to be gained from applying more pressure to either low- or high-risk patients. But "we're trying to work with that [medium-risk] population more to try to find some method of payment," says Keith Eggert, Orlando Regional's vice president of revenue management.
How long before non-emergency treatment is denied because of a low 'health care credit score?'
White Coat Rants has a good summary of the issue.