Medical Liens: Saving Accident Victims

Posted by admin

May 31, 2010

Medical liens are designed to ensure that people are able to receive immediate health care treatment while they await the outcome of their personal injury trial. With a Doctor lien, doctors agree that the payments for the treatment received by a patient will stay postponed pending the conclusion of the trial. In order to better guarantee this agreed outcome, Health care liens are more common amongst third party injury cases where the the patient appears (based on the facts) to be the obvious no fault victim. These involves injuries sustained in personal injury cases such as those found in car accidents, product liability suits, slip and fall incidences and a lot more.

However, even though the intentions of a medical lien might appear honorable, there are a number of factors which have encouraged the reluctance by most doctors and hospitals to consider its use.

The length of time between treatment and payment:

In the halls of a courtroom, time is not a treasured factor. Court cases all too often go on for several years before an eventual decision is reached. While waiting for this outcome, most hospitals are forced to continue without their payment. Doctors are not permitted the authority of “forcing” the issue of payments until a case has been concluded. The financial implication of this extension of deserved payment is often more than most physicians are able to deal with. Most of the hospitals and clinics, which initially were open to accepting cases of medical liens, have quickly come to find that this can gravely affect their operational cost and balance.

The Lack of Guaranty offered: Even though most individuals do no actively set out to achieve this aim, people sometimes do fail to keep their end of the agreement. This occurrence is more common amongst people who go on to lose their injury case in court. Unlike the contingency agreement between an attorney and a client wherein an attorney is not entitled to any payment if the case is lost, no such agreement exists in the writs of a lien. Patients are duty bound to still pay their fees even if they lose their battle in court. This however does not always occur.

Unnecessary delays: In an ideal situation, payments should be made immediately after a case has been won. Most insurance companies however tend to delay the payment of these fees on some procedural clause. Doctors are thus forced to keep waiting for their promised funds while insurance houses continue to benefit from incoming interest gained from the settlement figures which are still being held. This inevitably results with many doctors becoming frustrated. Many of them then go on to a point of avoiding future lien agreements of this nature.

One way of resolving these problems is for doctors and hospitals to sell medical liens to a medical liens funding company. These medical liens funding services, act as intermediaries between the patient and clinic providing the money needed by the hospital even before a case has begun. The funding company then goes on to secure the agreed payments of a lien from the patient via the insurance company that has been charged with the provision of the settlement.

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