American Medical News
November 12, 2001
by Cheryl Jackson, AMNews staff
Would you like to know, right when they walk in the door, if patients can pay you?
TransUnion LLC, a consumer credit information service headquartered in Chicago, and Englewood, Colo.-based Quovadx Inc., a software company, last month began offering ExpressCheck.
The system provides credit scores, which hospitals and doctors can use to determine payment arrangements. It follows the lead of Atlanta-based Equifax Inc., which last year began offering a similar product.
TransUnion’s pitch: Hospitals and physicians will need to use such systems more often as patients become responsible for bigger shares of their medical bills.
Physicians and hospitals feeling the pressure from lower reimbursement rates have started honing in on billing inefficiencies. Managed care has reduced revenues, and in response to rising premiums, employers have pushed more of the costs on to workers, who are facing bigger deductibles and co-payments.
Having the credit history upfront can help a physician practice or a hospital in developing adequate payment plans, Smith said (Neal Smith, national sales manager for TransUnion). If a patient’s credit history is poor, for example, the facility might insist on payment upfront for an elective procedure.
Brenda St. Pe-Bruno, vice president of sales for Equifax:
“Physicians every day are starting to come to us for access. The large physician groups are very interested. Even your onesies and twosies doctors’ offices are interested in using it.”
Comment: As the numbers of uninsured continue to increase, the leadership of the American Medical Association is supporting defined contribution approaches that include medical savings accounts, tax credits, and greater cost sharing to empower the patient as a health care shopper. These policies are impairing access for the insured by making out-of-pocket expenses unaffordable. Underinsurance is growing at an even greater rate than the growth of the uninsured. It is heartbreaking for physicians with traditional values to see the profession responding today by adopting rapid credit checks that will protect the physician from the uninsured and underinsured. Isn’t it time for the AMA leadership to begin supporting policies that will protect patients from health care debts that impair access to care? A comprehensive program of universal health insurance would serve us all just fine, physicians and patients alike.