What does Hunstein means for FDCPA 3rd-party violations? Reader mail about New Mexico. Benchmarking your call monitoring. All in this week's Compliance Weekly. Read on!

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Hunstein

Today -- 21 April 2021 -- the 11th circuit ruled that collection agencies that send data files to letter vendors are in violation of the 3rd-party disclosure rule in the FDCPA.

It is 3.30pm as I write this, and you'll like get this in your inbox by 4.30pm, and as of this moment we now all know the same amount of information.

This, friends, is a cluster.

What's to be done?

Right now? Nothing. 

This will be argued and analyzed and by people from various parts of the industry -- including consumer attorneys. The full ramifications of the ruling are still sort of being discovered.

Should we stop sending data files to our letter vendor?

You should have a conversation with your counsel -- in-house and outside -- about this. You can find the decision here.

Are other vendor relationships implicated in this?

You...should have a conversation with your counsel -- in-house and outside -- about this, too. 

What about your Model Validation Notice webinar? Is that still happening?

insideARM had previously scheduled a webinar for tomorrow (Thursday, 22 April) to focus on the Model Validation Notice. In light of the Hunstein ruling, we're postponing it to Thursday, 29 April. We'll use the time between to read (and re-read) (and sob) the Hunstein decision and prepare answers that take it and the Model Validation Notice into consideration.

You can register for that webinar here: insideARM Presents: The Model Validation Notice and the Hunstein Decision

You can also absolutely send me angry emails to commiserate over. This is bonkers.

 

 

Reader Mail: New Mexico

Last week, I recapped an article from Missy Meggison about a New Mexico healthcare law going into effect on 7/1/2021. (You can read my write-up here and you can read Missy's original article here.)

Compliance Weekly reader wrote in to ask:

I have questions related to the New Mexico law. State law jurisdiction is sometimes confusing.

So the law would certainly cover the practices of any medical facility located in New Mexico. I think that is a given.

Does it (can it?) cover the practices of medical facilities that provide care to New Mexico residents at locations outside New Mexico? Say the consumer lives in Albuquerque, but goes to Denver for medical treatment? Further, that same consumer’s unpaid debt that was incurred in Denver is placed with a collection agency in Missouri for collection? Do the protections of the law extend to the collection of that debt because the consumer resides in New Mexico? The collection activity, billing, etc. would occur in New Mexico because the patient is a resident of New Mexico, but the provider is not in the State. Let’s also say that the Missouri debt collector is licensed in New Mexico, which they would have to be to collect from a New Mexico resident. I may have just answered my own question somewhat, but I do think the location of the health care provider remains an important factor.

Let me know if that is totally confusing. It is a realistic scenario, I believe.

It's confusing and realistic! I asked Missy for some insight. As a reminder: she's not offering legal advice and is not your attorney. (Unless she is, but that's none of my business.)

This is of course not legal advice; however, I took a look at the law, and it is unclear. It doesn't specify whether it does or does not apply to NM residents. "Patient" just means the person who received healthcare services, and there is no requirement that the healthcare services were rendered in the state. So, I could really argue it either way. This might be something that gets carved out through courts later on.

As a practical matter though, the billing statement piece of the law cannot be applied to out-of-state services, because the NM law requiring billing statements does not apply to out-of-state facilities. As a result, there are no billing statements out-of-state entities could possibly have to send to collection agencies prior to collection activity. That said, I can absolutely see where a consumer attorney would try to stretch the receipt requirement and the payment application requirement to NM residents, regardless of where the services took place.

I hope this helps.

I hope it helped, too!

 

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