2023 New Mexico Statutes › Chapter 57 - Trade Practices and Regulations › Article 32 - Patients' Debt Collection Protection › Section 57-32-2 - Definitions.

As used in the Patients' Debt Collection Protection Act:
A. "collection action" means any of the following:
(1) selling a person's medical debt to another party, including a medical debt collector, but not including medical debt as part of the assets and liabilities when selling a health care facility or third-party health care provider; or
(2) actions that require a legal or judicial process, including:
(a) placing a lien on a person's property;
(b) attaching or seizing a person's bank account or any other personal property;
(c) commencing a civil action against a person; or
(d) garnishing a person's wages;
B. "consumer" means a natural person;
C. "department" means the human services department [health care authority department];
D. "health care facility" means:
(1) a health facility required to be licensed by the department of health, except for:
(a) an adult day care facility;
(b) a boarding home not under the control of an institution of higher learning;
(c) a child care center; and
(d) a shelter care home; or
(2) a health facility that is an urgent care center or freestanding emergency room that is required to be licensed by the regulation and licensing department;
E. "health care services" means services for the diagnosis, prevention, treatment, cure or relief of a physical, dental, behavioral or mental health condition, substance use disorder, illness, injury or disease, which services include procedures, products, devices or medications;
F. "household income" means income calculated by using the methods used to calculate medicaid eligibility;
G. "indigent patient" means a patient with a household income that does not exceed two hundred percent of the federal poverty level;
H. "medical creditor" means a person that provides health care services and to whom the consumer owes money for those services or the person that provided health care services and to whom the consumer previously owed money if the medical debt has been purchased by one or more medical debt buyers;
I. "medical debt" means a debt arising from the receipt of health care services;
J. "medical debt buyer" means a person that is engaged in the business of purchasing medical debts for collection purposes, whether that person collects the debt or hires a third party for collection or an attorney for litigation in order to collect such debt;
K. "medical debt collector" means a person that regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, medical debts originally owed or due or asserted to be owed or due to another person. A medical debt buyer is considered to be a medical debt collector for all purposes of the Patients' Debt Collection Protection Act;
L. "patient" means the person who received health care services or a parent or legal guardian of a minor or an adult under guardianship who received health care services;
M. "superintendent" means the superintendent of insurance; and
N. "third-party health care provider" means a licensed health care professional or an entity with revenues of at least twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) annually, when billing patients independently for health care services provided in a health care facility.
History:
Laws 2021, ch. 31, § 2.
ANNOTATIONS
Bracketed material.
— The bracketed material was inserted by the compiler and is not part of the law. Laws 2023, ch. 205, § 16 provided that references to the human services department shall be deemed to be references to the health care authority department.
Effective dates.
— Laws 2021, ch. 31, § 14 made Laws 2021, ch. 31, § 2 effective July 1, 2021.