Data Book podcast: Medical debt and the impact on patients and providers

Medical debt is an enormous problem, as more than half of all U.S. adults have gone into debt because of medical or dental bills, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Ryne Natzke

In our latest episode of the “Data Book” podcast, we talked about medical debt with Ryne Natzke, the chief revenue officer of Sphere. Sphere is a technology company that works with health systems on patient billing systems.

Ryne discussed the difficulties for patients. And he says medical debt could be considered a social determinant of health.

“Medical debt is the largest overall contributor to personal debt,” Natzke says.

We also talked about the challenges for providers. Healthcare providers, which are facing tremendous financial pressures in the pandemic, also need to collect as much as possible from patients, Natzke adds.

“Hospitals don’t love having all this money sitting out there uncollected,” he says.

We talked about how health systems can sustain their operations without leaving their patients with catastrophic debt. He talks about the need for health systems to use technology to help determine which patients may be facing financial hardships due to their medical costs, and how to help them.

But systems also need to give patients the human touch, and allow them to reach a person when they truly need assistance.

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