Medical Mettle: New Organization to Accredit Healthcare Agencies

Earlier today insideARM announced the formation of a unique business association that seeks to more closely unite healthcare finance professionals and ARM industry companies by establishing an accreditation process replete with rigorous standards, business mix prerequisites, and an actual enforcement mechanism to ensure member compliance.

The Accredited Healthcare Business Association (AHBA), designed by industry veteran Jack Nixon of CMRE Financial Services, will soon begin building a stable of member agencies and medical debt buyers who will assent to comply with a thorough list of aboveboard business practices in the recovery of delinquent healthcare receivables.  

In plainspoken terms, the need for a barometer to gauge the integrity of healthcare collectors’ business processes is the elephant in the corner for hospital A/R executives.  

Plagued by rising bad debt on one front, healthcare creditors are also made patently uneasy by the risk of negative community image brought about by a disreputable outsourcing partner on anther front.

But this type of duality is actually shared by both the healthcare sector of the ARM industry and patients as well.

Agencies that work medical paper know they must establish reputations with healthcare creditors that surpass their counterparts in other ARM market segments.  That’s all well and good, but without an autonomous body to validate their policies and procedures, any media report about abusive collection practices virtually erases even the best agencies standing in the healthcare industry.

And patients… well, one does not need a divining rod to figure out consumers’ general perception of debt collectors.  Think hirsute ruffians with tire irons.  At the same time, the financial and psychological burdens of unpaid medical bills are probably as onerous to patients as disease itself.  Dignity is a watchword for healthcare providers; I suspect that patients who fall behind on their hospital bills expect the same from collectors.

So there’s that elephant.  Just sitting there.  And curiously enough, it’s the same elephant (in some ways) for the healthcare creditors, ARM companies, and U.S. consumers who all share a room with it.

As both a healthcare receivables analyst and member of the AHBA Advisory Board, I have been long convinced that—particularly for healthcare ARM—the concept of accreditation would legitimately benefit patients, agencies and debt buyers, and hospital creditors.  

Knock, Knock.  It’s AHBA at the door.  They’re here to let your elephant out.

If you are an ARM industry firm currently working in the healthcare market, or a healthcare industry professional responsible for accounts receivable outsourcing, and would like more information about the Accredited Healthcare Business Association, please contact Michael Klozotsky, Analyst, Kaulkin Ginsberg Company, at 240-499-3836 or mklozotsky@kaulkin.com.

Kaulkin Ginsberg is the parent company of insideARM.com.