New IRS Rules for Nonprofit Hospitals

The IRS has recently released rules to address aggressive debt collection from poor patients by nonprofit hospitals, ProPublica reports. The rules, required by the Affordable Care Act, will require nonprofit hospitals to "post their financial assistance policies on their websites and offer a written, 'plain language summary' of them to patients when they're in the hospital. If patients don't apply for assistance or pay their bills, then the hospitals are required to send at least one more summary of the policy, along with mentioning it on billing statements. And if hospitals plan to sue patients over unpaid bills, they must attempt to verbally tell the patients about their policies, as well as send notices that they are planning to sue and that the patients may qualify for financial assistance."