The Health Shopper

Tenet Hospitals, Fair Isaac, and several other groups have partnered to develop a medFICO score that will rate a consumer's ability to pay for health related expenses and could be in some hospitals by the summer. To avoid violating privacy laws, the medFICO score report will not list the reason an individual was in the hospital and it will also capture when individuals have a history of paying medical bills on time-something not currently captured under traditional credit reports.

Hospital officials say a medFICO is needed because FICO scores reflect the ability to pay planned debt such as mortgage costs, and not the unplanned expenses of medical care, and state that they will restrict use of the credit score to patient discharge. Consumer advocates worry, however, that hospitals might check the score upon admission and be reluctant to provide high-cost care to individuals with lower scores.