As more and more patients are having to pay more of their healthcare costs out of their own pocket, the need to have a fair, standard process for billing and collections was obvious. There was a clear need for a common-sense best practices approach to clarify the billing and collection process of medical debts.
Through a medical debt collection task force, The American Collectors Association International, along with HFMA and other healthcare industry leaders, have developed a common-sense approach to collecting medical debt. This cooperation was a result of the members of these organizations seeing the need to standardize and simplify the billing and collection process for patients.
The result of this task force was the creation of Best Practices for Resolution of Patient Medical Accounts. It should be noted that the account resolution process begins before the patient’s services are rendered and ends when the patient either receives 100% financial assistance or pays the outstanding balance of the account.
More information on the task force report and these best practices is available at http://www.hfma.org/medicaldebt.