Sometimes medical expenses, especially hospital bills, are unexpected.

For people who find themselves owing thousands of dollars for medical treatment, Cascade Healthcare Community, parent company of St. Charles Medical Centers in Bend and Redmond, has a new payment plan meant to ease the pain. The program, called CarePayment, offers patients a long-term financing option without charging them interest.

”It’s an interest-free loan for 25 months … There are no fees or interest to the patient,” said Diana Mahnke, director of revenue cycle operations for Cascade Healthcare. ”It’s a service that we want to offer our patients.”

Before being admitted, patients will meet with members of Mahnke’s staff to discuss their payment options for hospital services. For those who can afford to pay their share of the cost – the part not covered by health insurance – they can pay the total through cash, check or credit card.

But for those who can not afford the payments, they now have another option, Mahnke said. Through CarePayment, a 25-month payment plan will be designed in which patients pay a minimum of $25 a month on their bill or 4 percent of the total – whichever amount is greater.

”If you don’t have a finance program and you have a $2,000 bill, most people can’t pay $2,000 in 30 days,” said Steve Wright, senior managing director of health care markets for Aequitas Capital Management, which manages CarePayment. ”It’s for people with a high co-pay or deductible or no insurance. We’ll allow you to pay this over an extended period of time. It puts that patient at ease to know they have another solution.”

Cascade Healthcare is contracting with Aequitas to offer the CarePayment program. Wright said Aequitas designed CarePayment and has been administering it nationwide for about a year. So far, 15 hospitals have signed on for the service and the company is adding two to three hospitals as clients every month.

Demand for the program is being driven by increases in the amount of health care expenses patients are expected to pay out-of-pocket, Wright said.

”Every patient is eligible for the program. We don’t screen. If you owe the hospital money, you have access to the hospital payment card,” Wright said. ”We don’t want that family out there that has a sick child to not come in and get care because they feel like they can’t pay.”

Patients who sign up for CarePayment will be given a card resembling a credit card. Wright explained that additional hospital bills can be added to the card, extending the payment plan.

While the program is beneficial for patients, the hope is that it will also help the hospital collect on more of its bad debt, Mahnke said.

”It’s really a win-win situation, it helps the patient and it will help us with the collection,” Mahnke said. ”It frees our collectors up. We can move those folks to the beginning of the process. They are talking to the patient before their procedure, or in-patient stay, to help them. I think they are going to like their job a lot more.”

Every year the hospital group provides millions of dollars in services that it is not reimbursed for, including debts that people don’t pay and charity care for which the hospital doesn’t charge. In 2005, the Bend and Redmond hospitals reported about $15 million in bad debt and about $10.5 million in charity care, said Linda Quon, a spokeswoman for the hospital group.

Increases in charity care and bad debt are evident at hospitals throughout the state as government programs continue to decrease reimbursements for medical care, said Kevin Earls, vice president of finance and health policy for the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.

”Hospitals are being asked to do more and more as government sponsorship and payment for care is dropping,” Earls said. ”The challenge becomes when patients who have the financial resources to pay their debts don’t meet that obligation.”

With CarePayment, Wright said, hospitals collect more of the bad debt so they can free up the charity care dollars for the people who need them most. Cascade Healthcare will continue to offer charity care alongside the new payment program.

”There is charity care for those who need assistance. That’s what those other dollars are for,” Wright said. ”This will bridge that gap if you will. There are people that can and should pay within terms. That middle group will say, ‘If you give us the right terms, we can pay this over time.’”

CarePayment is available now for new patients and for those with existing hospital bills. Mahnke said letters have been mailed to patients with existing accounts explaining the new program. For more information, patients are encouraged to contact the hospital’s financial services department at 388-7750 or 800-972-3194.

How it works

The CarePayment program offers patients a long-term financing option without interest fees. Every patient is eligible. Those who sign up will be given a card. For more information, contact the hospital’s financial services department at 388-7750 or 800-972-3194.