ACA and HFMA Team Up on Medical Debt Collection Guidelines

Regulators and legislators are bearing down on those who collect medical debt, and in anticipation of new laws and regulations covering those practices, organizations representing healthcare providers and collection agencies have joined forces to create best practice guidelines.

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), in conjunction with ACA International, assembled a task force of stakeholders that has met since March to “identify and document the current state of best practices.” The Medical Debt Task Force comprises representatives from both organizations, as well as from providers, credit agencies, credit bureaus, and patient advocate organizations.

The task force gave a peek into those proposed guidelines Wednesday at HFMA’s Annual National Institute in Orlando. While the full draft guidelines were not unveiled, members of the task force discussed several of the ones that will have a large impact on the industry.

The task force walked HFMA members through scenarios that demonstrated how some of the proposed guidelines would be applied, and based on those examples, it appears the task force is hewing closely to proposed legislation in Congress and regulations under consideration by the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service.

To view the proposed guidelines that were discussed and for more detail on the process going forward, read the coverage of the event on our sister site, insidePatientFinance.com.