The folks who invented the credit score for lenders are hard at work trying to devise a scoring system for hospitals and health care providers. This story is on the front page of MSNBC home page and I didn't see a diary on this potential outrage.
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.
The investors starting this medical FICO scoring system are Healthcare Analytics in conjunction with Tenet Health. Tenet Health are the people who had to pay back the US government $900 million for alleged unlawful billing practices and who counts Jeb Bush on its Board of Directors. Tenet Health whose CEO donates to Republican candidates and Chris Dodd whose home state capital is also known as the insurance capital of the world. These companies are the ones who now want to create a system similar to the credit score in determining how likely people are to pay their medical bills based on past payments.
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.
Tim Hurley, the spokesperson for Healthcare Analytics says their product will have no bearing on medical decisions for the patients, but I don't buy that. When I had my daughter in 1991 I had no insurance and shared a room with a woman prisoner who was chained to the bed. I had an epidural and a subsequent spinal headache, but was discharged 15 hours after giving birth only to be rushed back the same day in excruciating pain. Two years later when I had my son I was insured and received a private room with very attentive care and a two day stay. There was a difference in the way I was treated.
Physicians for a National Health Program had this story last month and they agree that scores could be checked before being treated and people with low scores could receive lower care.
Pamela Dixon of the World Privacy Forum isn't impressed with this at all:
"I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all. These are people’s lives we’re talking about. This isn’t some car."