In recent news it was revealed that Michigan doctors offices are requiring that, patients present and utilize their credit cards before getting any medical care. A fairly new internet based medical payment program permits medical providers to secure a credit card before medical help is provided.
Touting that it is fact that it is a way of making sure medical providers collect their pay while keeping administrative costs down, the business has been around since 2008. It works like this: upon arriving at their doctors office, patients are informed by their medical care provider what the maximum amount a particular procedure will most likely cost. The patient slides their credit card, gets the procedure done, and gets sent out of the office with a receipt and a detailed slip of services that were provided.
After that has happened the doctor will bill the patient’s insurance company. It will tell the doctor how much of the work is covered; the balance left over is charged on the card. If a deductible hasn’t been met, then the whole price of the procedure is charged.
With the increasing health care costs, more pressure has is being put on patients to pay their bills in the form of higher deductibles, out of pocket expenses and unpaid bills. With this stress that is increasing, unpaid and delinquent bills have become big issues for medical doctors.
Patient’s health care payments top the charts now to cover three hundred billion dollars a year, and that number is supposed to grow up to twice that number by 2015. From this number, fifty to sixty billion dollars of current health care debts go without being paid. The program has been shown to reduce late accounts by up to eighty percent.
But some analysts remain skeptical. The issue of patients who don’t pay off their balance each month hasn’t yet been resolved, much less the issue of a patient not having a credit card.
Mallory Megan works for a debt collection agency. Also she composes articles on business and finance, consumer spending and collection agencies. Free reprint avaialable from: Medical Providers Cut Back On Collection With Credit Cards.
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