When Health Care Doesn't Care

I hate sending claims to a collection agency. When I do assign a claim, I’ve worked the debt to death and I’m confident, no one will collect it, including some bad ass collector. Some balances however are almost too small to mess with for very long. Bad checks received for a C.O.D. sale for example, get a letter so I can claim treble damages, then maybe a phone call or two if the check amount is over $500. Then it’s off to the agency. Never will I send an amount that is disputed to an agency without first attempting to resolve the dispute. If we’re right and we’ve proven the righteousness of our cause but the customer still refuses to budge; it is no longer really a dispute. I am indignant, then, that an organization like Kaiser Permanente would send a crummy $200 disputed claim to a collection agency and ding my Mother’s credit rating.

What is so galling is that Kaiser sent this claim to a collection agency, not because whoever is responsible for collecting outstanding bills had already exhausted all in house attempts to collect it. It was sent to a collection agency because, there is a designated schedule. After a certain amount of time, unpaid balances are sent to a collection agency. That clears it off of the desk of some hapless billing clerk whose expertise for handling unpaid bills is nil. Because it does affect credit ratings, collection agency assignments should be considered beyond expediency. My Mother is not trying to avoid payment. She has made numerous attempts to resolve the issue. However, someone dropped the ball, failed to follow up, failed to take the next step, a step that would have resulted in payment a long time ago and instead, threw the claim at an agency.

I understand that Kaiser Permanente is not a credit granting institution and therefore would not employ traditional credit and collection personnel. Rather they have billing clerks, untrained in the art of negotiation, unskilled in dispute resolution, ignorant of tact. They have an insurmountable pile of bills on their collective desks that they try to get through as quickly as they can. They pass the buck until it goes to the collection agency and it comes back to haunt them only when the son of an abused by they the system Mother goes ballistic.

In a time when the discussion about national healthcare centers around the quality of that care and the fear a lot of people have is in the end it will resemble Kaiser Permanente, the hospital would be wise to shore up its public image. An easy start is to handle minor billing problems better than it does. This is where Strategic Credit Management Solutions can help. We know billing systems and we know how to communicate with the public and the consumers. We can teach those who need to know, how to follow up, how to communicate with the customers and now to resolve disputes. We’ve been doing it for over thirty years. Not only would it get the bills paid faster, it would make for a more satisfied customer. See our website http://powerscredit.com/.

Your comments are welcome. E-mail us at patrickpowers@sbcglobal.net.