Privacy Digest

The doctor will see your credit now - Via The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com :

The folks who invented the credit score for lenders are hard at work developing a similar tool for hospitals and other health care providers.

The project, dubbed %u201CMedFICO%u201D in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient%u2019s ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive.

Fair Issac Corp., developer of the FICO credit score, is one of several investors in Healthcare Analytics, the Massachusetts start-up that is developing the hospital risk tool. Another investor is Tenet Healthcare Corp, one of the nation's largest hospital operators. Stephen Farber, who resigned as chief financial officer of Tenet in 2004, is the CEO of Healthcare Analytics.

Several published reports have described Healthcare Analytics product as a MedFICO score, computed in a way that would be familiar to those who've used credit scores. The firm is gathering payment history information from large hospitals around the country, according to a magazine called Inside ARM, aimed at %u201Caccounts receivable management%u201D professionals. It will then analyze that data to predict how likely patients will be to pay future medical bills. As with credit reports and scores, patients who've failed to pay past bills will be deemed less likely to pay future bills.

The idea sounds ominous to Pam Dixon, who runs the World Privacy Forum, which studies medical privacy issues.

"This is a bad idea and I don't think this benefits the consumer at all," Dixon said. "And what about victims of medical ID theft? Are we going to deny treatment to these people because they have a terrible MedFICO score?"

Firm says product's not ready yet
Tim Hurley, a spokesman for Healthcare Analytics, said criticism of the firm's work is purely speculative, as its product is still in development. Even the term MedFICO is inaccurate, he said

"MedFICO does not exist," he said, adding that the name %u201Cwill very likely not be used when we bring our tools to market.%u201D

He refused to confirm other published details about the company's work, saying it was too early given the %u201Cpremature nature of our product development cycle.%u201D Farber, the Healthcare Analytics CEO, is not granting interviews to discuss the product, said Hurley. Farber did speak to a Chicago Tribune reporter earlier this year.

Hurley did say, however, that hospitals will not use the Healthcare Analytics product before patients receive medical treatment, and it will have no impact on medical decisions.

He also pointed to federal law that makes it illegal for hospitals to refuse treatment to patients in their emergency rooms, regardless of a person%u2019s ability to pay.

The Healthcare Analytics tool will be used after patients receive care and after a bill is generated to help hospitals make better financial planning decisions, Hurley said. It will also help health care providers sort through patient records and potentially make it easier to write off some unpaid bills as charity cases, rather than delinquent accounts, which would offer the hospital some accounting benefits, he said.

(Read Original Article - Via The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com .)