The folks who invented the credit score for lending institutions are hard at work developing a similar tool for hospitals and other health care providers.
The project is called "MedFICO" and will give hospitals the ability to assess a patient's ability to pay their medical bills. It would be used in a similar manner as your credit score. Developed by Healthcare Analytics, the firm is already gathering payment history information from hospitals around the country according to the magazine Inside ARM which is targeted to accounts receiveable management professionals. The data is supposed to predict how likely patients will be to pay future medical bills. A spokesman for the company refuses to confirm published details aabout the company's work saying it is too early in the product cycle. They say that MedFICO does not exist. But, it does raise all kinds of questions about the medical privacy issues and what medical risk scoring would mean in the laws meant to protect the consumer.
Are we coming to the point where if you can not pay, you do not receive care?
Friday, January 18, 2008
How's Your Medical Credit Score?
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5 comments:
Just curious, will any of this matter after Hillary Care has destroyed the whole system?
Hmmm, just curious, will this matter after Hillary Care?
Guess those on Medicaid would never have any worries. All of their bills are paid by the taxpayers. That will leave citizens with private insurance and no insurance at all whom are affected. Great Plan!
MedFICO will be another invasion of personal privacy and at the same time useless in predicting future payment. In my 40+ years experience in hospitals, the patients with the "best ability" to pay are also the ones who are less likely to pay healthcare providers.
some people believe that health care is their right and that they are entitled to be treated without regard to the cost. Even those who can pay do not want to do so. We have created a society who do not understand the cost nor the value of care, but are looking for someone else to foot the bill!
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