Hospitals and health systems across the country struggle with collecting medical bills.
Here are three reasons hospitals and health systems have a hard time collecting medical debt, according to The Tennessean.
1. Billing practices are not aimed at collecting small, incremental payments from hundreds or thousands of patients, but are instead designed to bill insurance companies, The Tennessean notes.
2. Patients aren't psychologically or financially prepared to pay larger amounts, according to The Tennessean. According to the report, nearly one in three adults in Tennessee had outstanding medical debt in 2012.
3. Billing and pricing practices are complex. The Tennessean notes that a patient who undergoes open heart surgery could end up with individual bills from the cardiologist, the surgeon, the lab, the anesthesiologist and a consulting physician who helped read charts. Therefore, experts said, hospitals and health systems must engineer user-friendly billing practices and processes, according to the report.
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