Need a loan? Expect a credit check. Need a doctor? Expect a credit check.

Star Tribune

What do detectives and hospitals have in common?

Both need to find people who don't necessarily want to be found.

That's why a Maple Grove company that used to cater to private investigators and collection agencies has remade itself for the health care industry as hospitals and clinics struggle with rising bad debt.

Dan Johnson, a former telecom executive, started SearchAmerica by combining various national computer databases to help clients search for individuals. Now, hospitals use his software to verify the identity of patients, screen them for financial assistance eligibility and predict the likelihood they will pay their bills.

SearchAmerica's roster of about 1,000 clients includes California's Kaiser Permanente as well as Allina Hospitals and Clinics, Fairview Health Services and HealthEast Care System in Minnesota.

Last month, the company was sold for $90 million to Experian PLC, a Dublin, Ireland-based financial services giant.

Click the link for an interview with SearchAmerica boss Johnson. It starts very encouragingly:

Q Tell me how your business came about.

A I started the company in 1994; my background is in the telecoms industry. What I know how to do is connect databases together geographically.

No, not much about the Hippocratic Oath or medical ethics in his resume or in the interview.

This is the system we have, by disinterest and default, and"Kludge" is too kind a term for ServiceAmerica's addition to things. It is related, in sensibility and action, to the larger system we are currently watching fall down the well *it* dug for itself. I'm reminded of Michael Chrichton's pop-chaotician from Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm:

Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

As noted many times hereabouts, the next 15 years are ones of renewal and rewriting rules, and recalibrating the definition of "pain"--pain in terms of well-being, and pain in trms of balance sheet health.

UPDATE: Just ran across this on PhRMA's selfless pursuit of truth and efficacy over profit at American Prospect. More of the same, twice daily, after meals.

In 2002, four intrepid researchers filed a Freedom of Information Act. But they weren't looking for information on Guantanamo or revelations from Cheney's lair. All they wanted was the FDA's drug analysis data. Taxpayer funded research. They got it. The studies examined were conducted between 1987 and 1999 andcovered Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor. They found, on average, that placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs.

Put aside the surprising results: Why didn't the public know about these studies? Why wasn't the medical community informed? The answer, as Marcia Angell argues in an important New York Review of Books article, is that our system of clinical evaluation is so riddled with conflicts of interests that "it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines."