The decision to collect ever-higher financial responsibilities from patients directly is a daunting proposition for many practices. But should you require patients in need to pay upfront? Is it ethical to urge patients to sign up for medical credit cards to ensure your practice receives compensation which may lead to financial ruin for your patients?
As with some medical decision-making, the key may be to ask yourself whether these are practices you'd impose on a family member or friend, Cameron P. Kmet, a chiropractor in Anchorage, Alaska, suggested to the New York Times. Kmet asked himself this very question, and after answering no, he no longer offers medical credit cards, according to the article. Instead, he now runs a company that administers payment plans directly between providers and patients, with annual interest rates around eight percent.
As we've reported previously, the downsides of many health credit cards are that patients may not understand how the terms and interest rates change after an appealing introductory period and that in some cases clinicians have abused the ability to get paid upfront and not rendered care as promised. Nonetheless, Cristy Williams, the spokeswoman for CareCredit, told the NYT that roughly 80 percent of patients who selected deferred-interest credit paid off their debts before they were charged any interest. And despite the risks of offering vulnerable patients no-credit-check financing they may not be able to afford, proponents say it's an alternative to not being able to offer care at all.
Indeed, as Bloomberg News reported, increasing numbers of clinics and hospitals refuse to provide non-emergent care to patients unless they pay the full amounts upfront. One patient even told Bloomberg that one clinic insisted she pay her $1,000 deductible for the year before receiving treatment for a blood condition.
The reason for the trend, experts said, is for healthcare facilities to protect their businesses from the risk of not getting paid. "It used to be taboo to look like you were looking for money at a time when you were supposed to be focused on patient care," David Williams, president of Boston-based consulting firm Health Business Group, told Bloomberg. "It's not taboo anymore."
To learn more:
- read the article from Bloomberg News
- here's the story from the New York Times