Medical Biller Launches Program to Help with Healthcare Bad Debt

Aurora Health Care, Milwaukee, Wis.’s largest health care system, has hired newly-formed Health Payment Systems Inc. to provide a consolidated program that could be the answer to area hospitals’ rising bad debt.

Under its program, Milwaukee-based Health Payment Systems pays both the co-pays and deductibles owed by patients who are insured through their job, Vice President Tom Hajny told insideARM.com. HPS contracts through preferred provider organizations, in effect “creating our own defacto network,” Hajny said. Patients are then sent one comprehensive bill from HPS, rather than multiple bills from a variety of providers.

“One of the problems we see for consumers is trying to make any sense out of the different bills they are sent,” Hajny said. “By simplifying that piece of it and providing it in one bill” – or a “Super EOB” or explanation of benefits – “we feel they’re won’t be as much confusion about when a patient should pay, what a patient should pay, and why.”

HPS, which was created in late 2006, works with Med-Health Financial Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Children’s Hospital and Health System, for collection services on past due bills.

Aurora is HPS’s first contract, and patients will start to be enrolled between September and December of this year.