Atrium Health Forgives Medical Debt Liens For Thousands in North Carolina
Atrium Health, one of North Carolina’s largest healthcare providers, has taken a bold step to address the growing issue of medical debt in the state. In September 2024, the organization announced a significant initiative to forgive medical debts linked to real estate liens, affecting approximately 11,500 patients across multiple states, including North Carolina.
“When we expanded our charity care policy, we immediately began assessing all previous outstanding liens and determined that most of those patients would qualify under our new policy,” said Brad Clark, chief financial officer of Advocate Health. “As the next step in our roadmap to make care more affordable, we are accelerating this process and removing judgment liens that were placed on homes and property to cover unpaid medical bills.”
This move is part of Atrium Health’s multi-year effort to overhaul its approach to medical debt collection. The organization has committed to:
- Cancelling all judgment liens previously placed on homes and real estate
- Forgiving the outstanding debts associated with those liens
- Proactively reaching out to affected individuals, starting with the oldest cases
Some of these liens date back 20 years or more, highlighting the long-term impact of medical debt on patients and their families.
Atrium Health’s debt forgiveness initiative is part of a larger set of policy changes aimed at making healthcare more affordable and accessible. These changes include:
- Stopping the practice of reporting delinquent medical debt to credit agencies.
- Increasing the charity care threshold to 300% of the federal poverty level.
- Expanding automatic financial assistance for low-income and uninsured patients.
- Providing 100% charity care to over 168,000 patients in the previous year.
In addition to its own initiatives, Atrium Health has signed onto a statewide plan in North Carolina aimed at forgiving medical debt incurred over the past ten years. This plan, expected to take effect in 2025, will set statewide standards for providing no cost and discounted care to eligible individual. The decision to forgive medical debts has been met with positive reactions from patients and advocacy groups. Terry Belk, a cancer patient who owed thousands in medical bills, expressed astonishment upon learning that his debt would be forgiven. “There’s no way this would have happened without national coverage by NBC News,” Belk said.
Rebecca Cerese, a health policy advocate with the North Carolina Justice Center, praised Atrium’s decision and expressed hope that other healthcare institutions would follow suit. “I’m really thankful that folks like Terry have had the courage to speak out about something that is difficult to speak out on,” Cerese told NBC News. “Dealing with an illness or loss of a loved one is hard enough — we should not be compounding that with this additional stress of facing financial ruin.”
Atrium Health’s actions reflect a growing recognition of the need to address medical debt in the United States. As Clark said, “We believe our financial assistance program is now among the most generous in the nation and Advocate Health is committed to being part of the solution to address the medical debt dilemma so many people are facing today.”
This initiative represents a significant step towards making healthcare more affordable and accessible for North Carolina residents, potentially setting a precedent for other healthcare providers across the nation.
