Financial assistance applications
How do we take a financial assistance application, chase the income and household documents until it is complete, and route it for review with the decision recorded on the accounts?
Run the application as a chase to completeness with the collection clock held. When a patient asks for help, is screened as likely eligible, or is flagged by the policy, Callvu prefills the patient, the guarantor and the accounts, presents the application in plain language with only the questions the policy needs, chases the income and household documents (pay stubs or a tax return, benefits letters, the household size, the assets where the policy asks) through a link on the policy's clock, reads and checks each, computes the eligibility and the discount tier under the policy's federal poverty level thresholds, routes the application to the financial counselor in the Decision Desk with only the allowed outcomes, and writes the decision to every eligible account in the billing system with the notice to the patient and the collection hold managed throughout.
In scopeComplex: multi-party handoffsCallvu moves: prefill, chase and verify, decide, write back
Last updated November 7, 2026.
The problem today
The application sat incomplete for ninety days, the account went to the agency on day one hundred and twenty-one, and the patient had been eligible for a full write-off all along.
Financial assistance is the hospital's promise and its compliance obligation. The application is a paper form with a list of documents; the patient returns some; the counselor sends a letter for the rest; the account keeps aging on the collection calendar. When the agency reports the account, the hospital has taken an extraordinary collection action against a patient whose application was pending, which the tax rules forbid.
The tax-exempt hospital rules require a written financial assistance policy with eligibility criteria and the application process, a plain-language summary, reasonable efforts to determine eligibility, and no extraordinary collection action before 120 days from the first post-discharge statement or while an application is pending within the 240-day application period; a determination on a complete application; and the policy's discounts applied to all eligible accounts. Every one of those is a date, a document or a computation.
An application chased to completeness with the clock held is both the kinder path and the compliant one.
How it runs
From the requestto the system of record.
A patient asks for help in any channel, is screened as likely eligible by the payment plan or self-pay process, or is flagged by the policy's presumptive rules. Callvu opens the application with the accounts.
- Patient or guarantor
- Completes the application and uploads documents through a link, on their phone.
- Financial counselor
- Reviews the complete application and decides in the Decision Desk.
- Billing
- Applies the decision to the accounts and manages the holds.
- Callvu
- Prefills, presents, chases, checks, computes, routes and writes.
Prefill and present
The patient, the guarantor, the household on file, the open accounts and their dates (the first post-discharge statement date on each) are prefilled; the application is presented in plain language in the patient's language with only the questions the policy needs (household size, income sources, insurance status, assets where the policy asks) and the list of documents for their situation; a presumptive eligibility source (Medicaid enrollment, a prior determination, a scoring tool the policy allows) can shortcut it.
Chase and verify
The documents are uploaded through the link (pay stubs, a tax return or a non-filer statement, benefits award letters, an unemployment statement, a written attestation where the policy accepts one), chased on the policy's clock with reminders, read on arrival and checked (the names, the periods, the amounts against the stated income), and what is missing is requested with the specifics; the accounts are held from extraordinary collection action while the application is pending.
Compute and decide
The household income is annualized and compared with the policy's federal poverty level thresholds to compute the eligibility and the discount tier (free care, a sliding discount, the amounts generally billed cap); the financial counselor decides in the Decision Desk with the computation and the documents and only the allowed outcomes: approve the tier for the policy's period, approve a different tier with the reason, request the specific missing items, or deny with the reasons and the right to reapply.
Write back
The decision is written to every eligible account in the billing system (the discount applied, the balance adjusted, the period of eligibility recorded so later accounts qualify), the written notice with the basis and any remaining balance goes to the patient, the collection hold is lifted or maintained accordingly, and the application and documents are retained under the policy.
Where it ends: The patient's application was chased to completeness on the policy's clock with the accounts held, the eligibility was computed under the policy's thresholds, the counselor decided with the documents, and the billing system applied the decision to every eligible account with the notice sent. The Decision Trace shows the computation, the tier and the decision; the Audit Trace shows the application, each document, the holds and the writes with time.
Runtime enforcement
What is enforcedwhile the work runs.
The regulations preloaded in Callvu Studio and the bank's own policies, applied as steps that run, not lines in a binder. A step that breaks a rule does not run, so a completed run was compliant.
The handoff
Between the front doorand the back office.
The front door
Any channel, including the payment plan and self-pay screening processes; the patient completes and uploads on their phone.
The back office
The counselor decides complete applications with the computation; billing applies the decision and the holds from the record.
The Decision Desk
- The complete application goes to the financial counselor in the Decision Desk with the computation and the documents, and only approve the tier, approve a different tier with reason, request specific items, or deny with reasons and the right to reapply.
Proof
In scope.Proof at scale, not one process at a time.
The kind of process Callvu runs in production for customers in this industry. Ask for a reference on this exact process. The results below are the industry's published proof; each claim code links to its record on agents.callvu.com.
23 hospitals in the Ministry of Health network run on Callvu.
Across Callvu customers
More than 1,000 processes are live across Callvu customers.
Across Callvu customers
Questions
What buyers ask next,answered plainly.
What documents are needed?
The ones the policy lists for the patient's situation: pay stubs or a tax return, benefits letters, an unemployment statement, or a written attestation where the policy accepts one, uploaded through a link and checked on arrival.
Is the account protected while the application is pending?
Yes. The accounts are held from extraordinary collection actions from the application's opening, which the tax-exempt hospital rules require, and the 120-day and 240-day periods are tracked on each account.
How is eligibility decided?
The household income is annualized and compared with the policy's federal poverty level thresholds to compute the tier; the financial counselor decides in the Decision Desk with the computation and the documents, and the decision applies to every eligible account.
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