Tuesday, July 23, 2013

GiveForward helps with patient finances

What ActBlue does for political fundraising, what Kickstarter does for new ventures, GiveForward does for needy patients and families.  The idea is that you create a fundraising webpage for someone you care about, publicize its existence through your social media networks, and people who are moved contribute. The site takes a modest handling fee.

To date, the site has raised over $53 million for patients' medical bills and out-of-pocket expenses.

An interesting question is whether directors of revenue integrity and CFO's of major hospitals would be interest in adopting the platform as a free, add-on service on their hospital websites.  One hypothesis is that doing so might increase patient satisfaction and help recover more money from self-pay patients.  Another is that it would be viewed as self-serving and tacky, rather than altruistic.  If you are in an administrative capacity in a hospital, please send your thoughts on this question. Would this be interesting to you?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not as large of an organization, but http://sinkorswimphiladelphia.org/ is a non-profit trying to accomplish similar goals in Philadelphia.

Anonymous said...

I don't necessarily think it's tacky, but if a hospital is going to implement utilizing such platforms, they need to be willing to use it for ALL patients. Including controversial treatments and even elective (but sometimes necessary) procedures - for example, abortion care.

If a hospital isn't willing to take every instance of a patient's need seriously, then leave it up to the "GiveForward" and health fund folks to take care of.

Anonymous said...

I'd be more likely to kick in if the hospital was billing at no higher than commercial payment rates. If they're charging the typically inflated uninsured/"rack rate", I'd have a hard time donating to a hospital-sponsored fund.