# Patient's Filing Bankruptcy



## mosmith (Apr 15, 2010)

Hello everyone.  The practice recently received a bankruptcy notice for the court regarding a patient.  How do you handle their account?  Does it become a write off or leave it outstanding?  Please help.  Thank you.


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## aslonsky (Apr 15, 2010)

In the practices that I handle - they write off the balances as bankruptcy. If you don't intend to go to the creditors meeting for your balance then there really aren't any other options. If you have a representative at the meeting then depending on the type of bankruptcy they are approved for you may still have to write it off or work out a re-payment plan.


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## cleanclaims (Apr 15, 2010)

I agree with the previous post.  We always wrote them off to bankruptcy.  It's a waste to spend any time looking at it again unless you intend to go to the meeting, as was listed above, but if you want to get more technical about it, we asked the patient "which chapter did you file"?  You wait until you get their "discharge' papers in the mail for chapter 7 and that means that you won't get a dime in the future, if they file chapter 13, you could get $0.50 cents on the dollar but you generally don't see a penny until the discharge 5 years from the court date. That's why it's easier to just write it off.


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