With input from members of our Stakeholder Advisory Council, the Financial Health Network developed recommended strategies for hospitals and health systems to help prevent medical debt. Although each recommendation is effective as a stand-alone, hospitals and health systems can achieve the greatest impact by implementing them all.

Improve Financial Assistance and Repayment Programs

• • 扩大财务援助资格，以包括无法支付医疗费用的患者，包括有免昂自付费用的保险患者。
  • Ensure financial assistance is available to all patients who may be eligible.
  • 对于不符合经济援助的患者，扩大还款选择权并确保他们在计费过程之前可以使用这些选择。
  • Engage a broad range of constituents for regular review and improvement of financial assistance policies.
  • Halt legal action against patients eligible for financial assistance.

Support Informed Patient Decision-Making

• • Elevate, improve, and effectively use price transparency tools to support informed patient decision-making.
  • Incorporate cost-of-care conversations into the care process, and provide education and training to care teams.
  • Provide financial navigation services to help patients understand costs and access financial assistance.

Proactively Identify Risk of Medical Debt

• • Proactively identify patients who may struggle to pay medical bills.
  • Develop patient-centered approaches for assessing ability to pay, and link these assessments directly to financial assistance and repayment options.
  • Incorporate medical debt as an explicit focus area of Community Health Needs Assessments.