Firm pitches credit scoring for self-pay hospital patients

Increasingly, hospitals are treating patients with large CDHP-style deductibles in addition to their existing influx of uninsured patients. The thing is, few hospital collections departments have good tools for dealing with this debt burden. Now, a new company backed by credit industry giant Fair Isaac has set plans to offer a tool which analyzes whether a given patient can pay their bill or whether a hospital should just take a writeoff. The company, Healthcare Analytics of Waltham, MA, hopes to give hospitals an alternative to pulling consumer credit reports, which usually don't include hospital collections data. In addition to backing from Fair Isaac, Healthcare Analytics is funded by Tenet Healthcare and VC firm North Bridge Venture Partners.

Today, Healthcare Analytics is still in the R&D phase of operations. To develop a basis for analysis, it's in the process collecting patient billing data from hospital systems with a collective $100 billion in net revenue annually. In coming months, the startup is will use the data to create medFICO, a healthcare-related version of Fair Isaac's credit industry standard FICO scoring system. It should be making medFICO available in mid-2008.

To find out more about Healthcare Analytics:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece

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