Posted: Friday, January 18 at 04:32 am CT by Bob Sullivan
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 “MedFICO” in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient’s 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 “accounts receivable management” 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?"
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I knew it was coming to this. The so called "Health Care" industry has become nothing but big business catering to it's stockholders. If they charged a "Fair" price for their services it would be different. They charge what they want because we have no alternative. Ninety percent or more of us are now one accident or sickness away from bankruptcy. I think it's time for a decision on national health care. I say my taxes go to help our own citizens instead of the blowing up and then rebuilding of Iraq. Not to mention all the illegal immigrants we are now supporting. I would love to see a little return on my investment in this country. Hillary says she is willing to try to fix it and I'm ready to give her a shot at it.
Welcome to America! Now Speak English or Get the Hell Out! HT
