ATLANTA — Channel 2 Action News Investigates has learned that Piedmont Healthcare hired the company of a long-time Piedmont board member to provide third-party medical credit cards to patients.
Both the hospital and the board member, David Hanna, say the relationship was vetted by Piedmont’s Compliance Department’s conflict of interest process.
“It doesn’t sound like a very solid conflict of interest rule to me if you have board members who stand to gain financially from a decision the hospital makes,” Georgia Watch Executive Director Liz Coyle told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.
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Consumer advocates like Coyle and Channel 2 Consumer Adviser Clark Howard say these medical credit cards that often start with introductory rates before moving to high monthly interest are dangerous for consumers.
“These cards are wonderful for providers and nightmares for consumers,” Howard said.
“Most of the patients who end up on these plans are the ones who can least afford the interest that comes with trying to pay off medical debt,” Coyle said.
Piedmont Healthcare uses a Georgia-based company, Curae to provide what it calls on its website “financing options” to Piedmont patients.
Curae is owned by a company called Atlanticus. The founder, longtime CEO and current Executive Chairman of Atlanticus, is David Hanna.
Hanna also served 13 years on the non-profit board of directors of Piedmont Healthcare, including time as chairman of the board. He left the board in 2024. The deal with Curae was signed in 2019, while he was a board member.
David Hanna told Gray in an email, “Curae, a division of Atlanticus, and Piedmont made their deal without my involvement and independent of my serving on the Piedmont board. When I learned of that arrangement, however, I informed Piedmont leadership of my association with Curae through Atlanticus, in keeping with the Piedmont Code of Conduct. I believe the amount of business between Piedmont and Curae is fairly insignificant.”
But it’s significant enough that Curae put out a press release promoting the importance of the Piedmont deal when it began in 2019.
Piedmont spokesman John Manasso told Channel 2 Action News in a statement, “We reviewed multiple similar vendors before selecting Curae as a financial assistance option for patients. Mr. Hanna fully disclosed his affiliation with Curae, and the relationship with Curae was vetted and managed through our Compliance Department’s conflict of interest process.”
Coyle countered, “I can tell you that at Georgia Watch, we would find that to be a conflict of interest.”
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In May, Channel 2 Action News Investigates reported how Emory Healthcare steers patients on bills and their MyChart statements to a medical credit card, CareCredit.
Emory patient Elizabeth Burns noticed CareCard on her bill. “It is inappropriate. It’s unconscionable,” Burns said.
As non-profit hospitals, Emory and Piedmont pay no taxes and are required to provide “community benefits” for that tax benefit.
If you look on the Piedmont website, it states that it does provide both “hardship assistance” and “no interest-payment plans” in-house.
But Coyle warns that patients have to know to ask.
“Steering patients who are going to struggle to pay a medical bill onto a form of credit that comes with interest is not helping the community the way non-profit hospitals are supposed to,” Coyle said.
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