With a growing portion of the population receiving healthcare without insurance coverage, medical debt collections has become more complicated. These “self-pay” debtors present a new challenge for medical collectors — one that nTelagent Inc. hopes to solve with its Self-Pay Management System, released in April.
 
“Nobody [else] is handling the patient experience from a holistic perspective,” says Earl Winter, chief executive of Nashville, Tenn.-based nTelagent. “They just know how to handle insurance.”

As a result, medical collectors often label self-pay accounts as bad debt. That designation puts the account at the bottom of the collector’s priority list, even though, according to nTelagent’s research, more than half of those accounts can be collected in full.
 
The factor collection agencies are overlooking is the numerous charity and government programs that can provide money to the uninsured. Using SPMS, collectors simply enter a debtor’s name and address into the browser-based interface. nTelagent then taps its network to track down the debtor’s demographic information, like age and gender, and in seconds ?nds potential sources of funding.

It even acts as a scripting program, prompting the collector to ask questions that might lead to more funding. For example, the system may prompt the collector to ask if the debtor was a crime victim; a scenario that could qualify him for as much as $25,000 from his state.
 
Debt buyers may also use the system to ?nd hidden value in cheap debt.