But maybe they should start talking money up front. Ennen suggested a prescreening of customers—what some in the industry called a “wallet biopsy”: a meeting to “confront the patient about how much they will be responsible for, and how they will take care of it.” Perhaps CHWC should work out a payment plan before any procedure. The hospital had done such a thing on a small scale. But now, Ennen said, maybe the hospital should require a deposit before every single elective or nonemergency surgery, as some other hospitals did.
