Medical liens are designed to provide people with immediate health care treatment before receiving the verdict of a personal injury trial. With a Doctor lien, physicians agree that the payments for the treatment received by a patient will stay postponed pending the conclusion of the trial. In order to better guarantee this agreed outcome, Health care liens are generally more common amongst third party injury cases where the applying patient appears to be the innocent victim. Examples of such scenarios include injuries sustained in personal injury accidents such as those found in car accidents, product liability suits, slip and fall incidences and a lot more.

However, even though the intentions of a medical lien might appear honorable, there are a number of factors which caused many doctors and hospitals to become wary about permitting the acceptance of its use.

Unpredictable Payment Duration:

In the halls of a courtroom, time is not a valued factor. Court cases all too often go on for several years before an eventual decision is reached. During this period, most hospitals are forced to continue waiting for their payment. Doctors are not permitted the authority of “forcing” the issue of payments until a case has been concluded. The financial implication of this extension of deserved payment is often a lot more than most hospitals are willing to accept. Most of the hospitals and clinics, which were initially willing to agree to cases of medical liens, have over the years become discouraged of this view for this very reason.

The Lack of Guaranty offered: Despite their best intentions individuals sometimes do fail to uphold their end of the bargain. Occurrences such as these are more common amongst individuals who end up losing their personal injury suits. Unlike the contingency agreement between a lawyer and his client wherein an attorney forfeits his fees in the eventuality of a loss, there is no such agreement with the wordings of a medical lien. Patients are duty bound to still pay their fees even if they lose their battle in court. This however does not always occur.

Unnecessary delays: In an ideal situation, payments should be made immediately after a case has been won. Unfortunately this rarely occurs. Instead, insurance houses tend to hold back the payment of these fees for one procedural clause or another. Doctors are thus forced to keep waiting for their promised funds while insurance houses continue to benefit from incoming interest gained from the settlement figures which are still being held. This inevitably results with many doctors becoming frustrated. Many of them then go on to a point of avoiding future lien agreements of this nature.

An effective solution to most of the problems experienced by the health care providers is to sell medical liens to a medical liens funding company. Companies such as these then become acting intermediaries between the patient and clinic providing the funds needed by the hospital long before the case has been completed. The funding company then goes on to secure the agreed payments of a lien from the patient via the insurance house to which the agreed payment is expected to come from.