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August 04, 2022: – Medical bills have evolved into an unpleasant debt—and all too common—a component of the U.S. healthcare system. Kaiser Health News recently wrote that 100 million people in the United States are in debt because of medical accounts, collectively owing an evaluated $200 billion. Prior reports indicated that half of Americans bear medical debt.
Now, a company concentrated on helping consumers fight these bills is accumulating some additional projectile.
Recently, New Hampshire-based Resolve Medical Bills reported it had raised $3.3 million in seed funding, headed by AlleyCorp Healthcare Fund with participation from various companies, inclusive of direct healthcare startup Nomi Health.
Resolve enables customers fight large medical bills using algorithms that specify billing errors and negotiators to decrease the bills.
Talking to Deb Gordon from Forbes, Braden Pan, founder and CEO of Resolve, the company generally finds that mistakes cause medical bills to be off by an average of 10%. (Some references estimate as many as 80% of medical bills are wrong.)
Pan states the company doesn’t just examine for blunders, they also work to lower bills overall. Resolve works with patients whose medical bills are $5,000 or more. Pan states they plan to use part of the investment to construct additional automation that will authorize them to decrease the minimum bill size to $1,000 or less.
Customers pay a flat fee plus a percentage of savings the company executes on their behalf; distinctive costs depend on the size of the bill. Clients can also pay a fixed price—$49 per bill—for help accessing hospital financial aid.
The company conveys that it has helped resolve nearly $20 million in medical bills, averaging 60% to 65% in savings per consumer.
Pan attributes their efficacy to two main factors: data on fair pricing to bolster negotiations and staff with a combination of expertise and diligence in medical billing negotiations.
“We have done these hundreds of times before. We know how it works,” Pan expressed. “You have to go in with the attitude of, ‘I’m not going to take no for an answer. I’m going to get this reasoned out.’”
Pan voiced Resolve focuses on helping consumers because that’s where he witnesses the greatest need for assistance.
“Hospitals and insurance firms have teams of people looking out for their financial interests, renouncing consumers squeezed in the middle,” he told.
Organizations like Resolve sit at the intersection of digital health and fintech but overlook neither sector, especially as the buy-now-pay-later trend that cleaned through healthcare, among other classifications, has stumbled amid industry leader failures and rising consumer financial issues.
Still, finance-focused healthcare organizations may only increase in relevance as healthcare costs increase and consumers continue to handle more of those costs right away.
“Just as we think about treatment toxicity, there is growing attention being paid to ‘financial toxicity,’” displayed Brenton Fargnoli, MD, managing partner of AlleyCorp Healthcare Fund. “Fear of financial destruction from medical bills puts additional stress on already weakened patients, resulting in many unintentional negative consequences. We see patient financial aid as a growing and important part of the patient journey.”
Mark Newman, founder, and CEO of Nomi Health, spoke Resolve represents a vision for how American healthcare can enhance.
“Americans need a new start, especially coming out of Covid while facing today’s economic problems,” Newman said. “We’ll champion Resolve to every association with which we partner so that Americans can pursue the care they need without facing the unthinkable tradeoff of health and financial solvency.”
Pan has focused his entire company on helping consumers avoid that tradeoff. “It’s our consideration that an everyday medical bill shouldn’t bankrupt an ordinar
