medical payment organization not disclosed at payment time.

[Wildchilde36]

Is I t legal to think you are paying the hospital but instead it is billed to the hospitals collection department/agency without your knowledge?

Example: you call hospital billing and make a payment. They do not tell you you are paying the collection department. They apply said payment as collection.  Collection is TLRA. A company that does account recovery.

It is yet unclear if they are an actual collection agency. Just got a letter from said department today with an unknown payment history. TLra can be easily looked up on the internet for Christus Good Shepherd hospital. It says they are an unincorporated organization owned by Christis Health. Christus is non for profit. Supposedly.

I have never knowingly made a payment to this company.

[Wildchilde36]

I'm assuming the elders here have not replied because they dont know, or this place is slowly dieing.  

[Glacier]

Perhaps in addition to doing collections for the hospital ,they also handle the hospital billing system.  

[CreditSucksNot]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:11 PM, Wildchilde36 said:

Is I t legal to think you are paying the hospital but instead it is billed to the hospitals collection department/agency without your knowledge?

 

Yes.  The scenario where this happens is the hospital is contracted with a collection agency and the terms of the contract are that if the hospital is contacted about payment on an account that has been turned over to the CA all payments must be forwarded to the CA.  This is because it is common for the contract terms to be the CA is paid a percentage of the amounts collected vs a retainer fee.  By allowing a patient to pay the hospital directly and bypass the CA doing the collection work the CA loses money.  When the bypass payment method became popular a lot of collection agencies changed to these type of contracts to avoid hours of work and expense of mailing statements for no money earned.

5 hours ago, Wildchilde36 said:

I'm assuming the elders here have not replied because they dont know, or this place is slowly dieing. 

 

This site is not "staffed" we are volunteers.  No one is sitting at a desk just waiting to answer new threads.  It isn't a paid job.  

[Why Chat]

Those of us who have volunteered hours of time for many years do not choose to respond to a question regarding medical payment procedures that do NOT present a problem.

If a healthcare provider has chosen to outsource it's regular collection activities then they are saving needed $$ they can use to hopefully increase wages for their staff.

[Wildchilde36]

On 8/24/2023 at 9:35 PM, CreditSucksNot said:

 

Yes.  The scenario where this happens is the hospital is contracted with a collection agency and the terms of the contract are that if the hospital is contacted about payment on an account that has been turned over to the CA all payments must be forwarded to the CA.  This is because it is common for the contract terms to be the CA is paid a percentage of the amounts collected vs a retainer fee.  By allowing a patient to pay the hospital directly and bypass the CA doing the collection work the CA loses money.  When the bypass payment method became popular a lot of collection agencies changed to these type of contracts to avoid hours of work and expense of mailing statements for no money earned.

 

This site is not "staffed" we are volunteers.  No one is sitting at a desk just waiting to answer new threads.  It isn't a paid job.  

I am fully aware this is not a staffed nor paid job by anyone. However this site also used to have a lot more action.

[MarvBear]

On 8/24/2023 at 4:34 PM, Wildchilde36 said:

I'm assuming the elders here have not replied because they dont know, or this place is slowly dieing.  

Not afraid to admit I DON"T KNOW.  

AND

This website has been up and online for 20 years.  Quite an accomplishment when the average lifespan of an online forum with common interests is 3 - 5 years.