Collecting Medical Expenses Through a Third-Party
Collecting medical expenses can be difficult, for a lot more reasons than one. For patients, it can be hard to understand why collecting the money is so important. In many cases, it’s easy to believe that healthcare and medicine should be provided to the citizens of a country free of charge, that it’s outrageous to charge for these things. For health care centers such as clinics and hospitals, it can be hard to be the bad guy when it comes to collecting money from patients, especially when it comes to preserving their image in the eye of the public. And with insurance, it can become a whole big mess that takes employees a lot of time to work out, when they could be put to far better use. Here are a couple of reasons why using a medical collection agency is often the best bet for a lot of health care facilities, and why it’s important to understand for patients.
Why It’s Important
As mentioned beforehand, it’s really important for patients to understand the reasoning behind payments. It can be hard to visualize the reasoning behind spending so much money on medicine, or a stay in the hospital, or a surgery, but it’s more complicated than just a price. Take into account where the money is going. First off, the healthcare center needs to pay for the building, and with that comes extremely large electrical and gas bills. Then they need to pay for janitors, clerks, nurses, doctors, and management. Many of which need to go through years of additional schooling, costing them a fortune in time and money that wouldn’t be remotely worth it if they weren’t paid decently. Next comes the actual equipment or medicine used or bought. These not only require a lot of materials, often expensive, to make them, but scientists and doctors also put in a very large amount of time and money into the development of the medicine, including testing, all of which take place off-site somewhere that requires its own bills, employees and materials. All in all, it’s not so hard to understand where it all goes.
Why Third-Party is Helpful
Despite the various reasons for the pricing of medicine and healthcare, many patients and citizens just don’t understand it. Or even if they do, it’s hard to make the payments. This is where the third party comes in. After a patient fails to pay or tries to avoid payment, the healthcare center can transfer them over to someone else to handle it. This means that the hospital doesn’t need to devote precious time and employees towards collecting money and can focus more on helping patients on-site, or taking in more. This also means, in many cases, that the hospital doesn’t need to take care of as much work when it comes to working with patient insurance. All of which is helpful in allowing these centers to continue helping patients. And a big plus of working with a third party is that it helps the public see the third party as the bad guy, rather than the hospital. However, not everyone sees these as separate entities.
When a debt collector working at a medical collection agency calls the patient regarding the debt, there is nothing to fear about the phone call. The FDCPA law prohibits a debt collector from using any false, deceptive, threatening, abusive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt. Work with this medical collection collector to amicably help you get rid of the debt, maybe offer to pay in installments rather than the one-time payment. You may also try to negotiate with the debt collector. For example: Offer them a one-time payment, but tell them to waive 20%.