Emergency Room Collection Agencies Avectus, Smith Group, Bolder Healthcare, RevClaims after Car Accidents
In the old days after a car accident, you might hear from the hospital collections department asking for information about the crash once in a blue moon. Now, it is a full-fledged business with massive corporations aggressively pursuing crash victims to get their hands on any settlement money. If you had a car accident and had health insurance, you need to read this article and reach out to us immediately.
The hospitals and these revenue companies will often tell you that they don’t bill health insurance after a car accident and not to worry and let them bill the third party person who caused the crash instead. This sounds helpful, but everything the hospital takes comes out of your eventual settlement and they are in breach of their health insurance contract.
Multiple venture capital firms like Edgewater Capital Funds and JZ Capital are backing these “Revenue Cycle Management” companies for several reasons, large collection accounts, the possibility of huge payouts and the patients are clueless and give up their rights because of the information imbalance.
If you get a letter from one of these companies, there are some key things to know:
- If you have health insurance and the hospital is on the plan, the hospital HAS to bill the health insurance, regardless of whether it was a car wreck. They are bound by their fee schedule with the health insurer and we have heard from multiple clients about hospitals refusing to bill health insurance and coming after settlement funds instead. Why do they do it? Greed. They want more than their contract rate. see WSBTV story on RevClaims and Grady refusing to bill health insurance.
- If you have medical payments insurance on your car insurance policy, that should technically payout before health insurance does to the hospital, but if it does not come up, don’t raise the issue. You can use the medical payments insurance to cover your out of pocket costs first and then use the rest to handle medical reimbursement to the health insurer.
- If you do not have health insurance, the hospital is entitled to take out a lien and will track the progress on the case.
- If you don’t have a case, for example where you caused the crash or the other insurance company is taking that position, let the hospital know. Often times when they realize there is no money to be had, they will put it into the bad debt pile.
Bolder is not strictly dedicated to collecting from car accidents and workers comp, they work with medical providers to improve revenue in many ways, but the Avectus/Smith Group is dedicated to those third-party payors and pursuing claims to the detriment of the pocketbook of the patient in many cases. Avectus and Bolder have absorbed most of their competition including the two small law firms that used to handle the work in Georgia, Clint Harkins firm and later, Elizabeth Richards Law.
Wall Street has come sniffing around the money trail. The small firms were agile and smart and knew when an injury case could support a payout and when they had to play ball. One thing is unclear. We know RevClaims, whether through ignorance or incompetence refuses to bill health insurance in some cases when they should. We do not know how Avectus and its partners will behave.