Since I’m simmering over experiencing first-hand what the practical implications are of medical TPA’s being safe from bad-faith or other consumer grievance claims under ERISA (see this post and the one I’ll write once my temper has cooled a bit more), something tells me that I should restrain myself from commenting too much on this:
MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles has a post discussing one of Fair, Isaac’s new products:
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.[...]
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.
And at this point, I’ll stop, since my “professional and recreational stats-geek” side and my “inner consumer advocate” are in serious conflict as a result of events of the past week. The pros and cons of such a scheme, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader, for now.