There's a huge controversy brewing in healthcare circles about Healthcare Analytics' effort to create a MediFICO Score--like a credit score for people based on their past payment of medical bills.
There's a great entry about the behind-the-scenes story by Maggie Mahar over at the Health Care Blog.
The fear: Hospitals will refuse to treat people based on their past payment record. Hospitals say the data will be used only after a patient is discharged--and the records will not include treatment information.
Are people upset? The over 2,000 comments on an MSNBC article on the topic suggests they are.
While this specific program has little impact on the wellness industry, it does raise a related issue many employees care about--discrimination in healthcare based on their past treatment.
It would be a terrible outcome if people were reluctant to participate in a wellness program like smoking cessation or exercise for high diabetes for fear it would reveal them as high-risk people to payors, insurers, etc.
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