Financial counselors help patients with bills

Since 2008, an uninsured patient who comes to Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in need of expensive surgery will find someone to help them figure out how to pay for it.

Lugene Inzana, the hospital's chief financial officer, said the hospital has placed financial counselors in its billing office.

"It's been very popular," he said.

The counselors can help people apply for various government insurance programs and, oftentimes, people who thought they didn't qualify find out otherwise. Sometimes, Inzana said, the complexity of the applications and not knowing where to apply stops people from trying, but the counselors can walk people through the process.

If the patient doesn't qualify for one of the government programs - HUSKY, SAGA or Medicaid - and doesn't have their own resources to pay for the surgery, L&M can turn to its charity care fund. If a patient's income is too high to qualify for the charity care fund, the hospital can put the patient on a payment plan. And for anyone able to write a check and pay off a bill promptly, the hospital will discount the bill 25 percent, Inzana said.

"We're trying to be proactive with the uninsured population," he said.

About 4 percent of the 15,000 inpatients and 500,000 outpatients who use L&M annually are uninsured, he said.