How to Collect a Doctor BillDavis, Franklyn Pierre
Science
How to Collect a Doctor Bill
Davis, Franklyn Pierre
Collecting of accounts; Jurisprudence; Medicine -- Practice -- Management
[2] Justice Court. Court of Record, 20 years.
[3] Judgment may be kept alive by issuing execution every five years.
[4] May be revived by proof of non-payment.
[5] If judgment is from any other state, 10 years.
[6] "Where the statute of limitations of another State or government has
created a bar to an action upon a cause accruing therein, while the
party to be charged was a resident in such State or under such
government, the bar is equally effectual in this State." (Code (M. & V.)
Sec. 3481.)
[7] "All actions for debt upon any recognizance, shall be commenced
within twenty years after the cause of action arose."
[8] "Surgeon's, physician's and dentist's accounts dating from the time
the services or medicine is supplied."
This table is as near complete as we are able to make it at this time.
The laws are changed frequently. This is accurate enough to enable any
physician to look over his books and find what per cent. of his accounts
have outlawed by his failure to enforce payment.
Remember that a payment, however small it may be, will revive an
account, even after it has become outlawed. Hence the advisability of
getting small payments at every opportunity. These payments should be
less than one year apart, as some States do not consider payments made
over one year apart.
Under the Oklahoma law a foreign judgment is limited to one year. In
West Virginia a foreign judgment against a person who has been a
resident of the State for ten years is barred.
A similar clause to the following, taken from the laws of the State of
Washington, is incorporated in the acts of nearly all States, and may be
considered as a general rule:
"In an action brought to recover a balance due upon a mutual, open and
current account, where there have been reciprocal demands, the cause of
action shall be deemed to have accrued from the time of the last item of
the account proved on either side, but when more than one year shall
have intervened between any of a series of items, they are not to be
deemed such an account."
Thus, if you do practice for a person, and a year elapses and you again
attend him, you cannot combine the two as one account, and enforce
collection by law.
CHAPTER VII
EXEMPTION LAWS.
Before starting a suit to collect money due you, carefully read up on
the exemption laws of your State. After carefully considering the
matter you will find that a judgment, if obtained, will avail you
nothing, should the debtor elect to take advantage of the exemption
allowed him by law.
Some States are very liberal in the amount of property a man may hold
which is exempt from execution on a judgment for indebtedness. Take for
instance, the State of North Dakota, where the head of a family may hold
a homestead and personal property to the value of $6,450, and in case
the head of the family should die, and was insured, the widow and
children could hold an additional $5,000 of life insurance money, making
a total exemption of $11,450.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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