New certification allows Holy Cross Ministries to help clients with medical debt issues

Friday, Jun. 23, 2023

SALT LAKE CITY — Holy Cross Ministries of Utah’s promotor/a team was the first in the United States to complete the Medical Debt Legal Advisor (MDLA) program; they now are able to give free medical debt advice to the underserved community. 

The MDLA program came about in 2020, after the Utah Supreme Court’s Office of Legal Services Innovation approved new non-profit pilot projects for the Utah legal regulatory sandbox. “A regulatory sandbox is a legal classification that creates a space where participating businesses won’t be subject to onerous regulations – usually for a limited amount of time,” according to the State Policy Network website.

The purpose of the MDLA program is to “connect people experiencing medical debt with non-lawyer advocates in the non-profit sector,” according to the website of the Utah Office of Legal Services Innovation, which is under the state’s Supreme Court. 

The program is “the first in the nation to empower non-lawyers to give legal advice about medical debt,” according to innovation4justice.org. 

According to the Office of the Utah Supreme Court, nearly 22,000 lawsuits are filed each year against people experiencing medical debt. “By the time a medical debt reaches the court system, devastating consequences for the debtor are almost inevitable,” states innovation4justice.org.

The MDLA program hopes to help address this issue. The program is run by both the University of Utah Eccles School of Business and the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. When HCM was contacted about having the promotor/a team trained to serve as bilingual non-lawyer Medical Debt Legal Advocates, they selected Carmen Cardenas to be the first to be certified. She underwent an 18-week training course.

“Carmen was the first, and now this summer two more are going to start the training,” said Carlos Flores, who manages Holy Cross Ministries’ promotor/a team.

Before this certification, HCM did offer some help to its clients in this area, but now “with this training and certification the help is even stronger, the knowledge is better,” Flores said. “Now we can navigate the system better,” and they are certified to offer this service.

Each month HCM receives about 80 requests for Medicaid applications, “and that application most of the time is tied to a medical bill,” Flores said. 

Having a certified MDLA is an “amazing opportunity” because it allows HCM to respond not with a temporary solution “but hopefully enables us to actually resolve the issue by advising the clients what to do so they don’t end in bankruptcy court or in debt that is going to impact their financial status,” said Emmie Gardner, Holy Cross Ministries’ CEO.

Prior to the staff being certified, “we were basically addressing issues as they came up as our clients brought their bills, and we worked with them on a payment plan,” Gardner said.

Now working with the sandbox, Gardner hopes that they will be able to provide their clients who may not be able to afford legal advice “the counsel to do what they need to stop the problem long term,” not just address an immediate issue, she said.

For Gardner, the benefit of this program “is the ability to help our clients, but specifically our Spanish-speaking clients,” she said. “Being able to address their medical-debts challenges and issues – they are unique to the population that we serve in the sense that there are so many in the Latino community that may or may not be insured or are underinsured, so they have a higher portion of medical debt challenges.”

HCM is available to help community members “navigate the system, but also to accompany them through the process,” Flores said. They don’t just help people with all the paperwork required to deal with medical bills issues, “we are here to be with them through all the process. … We are with them from the beginning of the process until the end, and our goal is that their medical bills are zero.”