Helping patients receive medical benefits. Collaboration between hospitals and legal services assists providers and low-income Kansans.

In Kansas, legal services lawyers have teamed up with Catholic healthcare administrators to help uninsured and underinsured hospital patients receive healthcare benefits from programs for which they may be eligible. The project--Hospital Patient Assistance Program--provides comprehensive assistance in establishing a patient's eligibility for medical benefits. Hospital participation in the program is simple. When business office or admissions staff discover that a self-pay patient has been registered with the program, they refer the patient to Kansas Legal Services; Inc. (KLS). KLS staff members try to determine if the patient is eligible for benefits from any of a number of programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Crime Victims Assistance. If KLS finds no programs for which the patient is eligible, it does not accept the case and notifies the hospital. Hospitals participating in the program have found that many accounts they previously wrote off as not collectible can be paid. Since the program began in 1990, participating hospitals have realized almost $8 million in payments from various benefit sources.