LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County health officials and hospital leaders are working to create a shared system that would screen patients for financial assistance, aiming to keep low-income residents from being billed for care they may qualify to receive at reduced cost or for free. The system, which partners hope to launch in January 2027, would use publicly available information to assess patients’ eligibility without requiring them to complete an application. County public health physician and epidemiologist Naman Shah estimates that the effort could prevent several hundred million dollars in medical debt each year. About 800,000 people in Los Angeles County have medical bills they cannot afford, according to county public health officials. Medical debt can push families toward high-interest credit card balances and poverty, Shah said, and may lead people to skip prescriptions and appointments, worsening their health. Hospitals commonly offer financial aid, often called charity care, but patients may not know assistance is available, and applying can be difficult. Jared Walker, who leads the nonprofit Dollar For, said many people leave hospitals without learning about financial aid. The proposed system uses a process known as presumptive eligibility: hospitals screen patients and determine whether they qualify for aid without requiring a formal application. Hospitals using such systems have reported increases of up to 50% in financial assistance provided, Shah said. Only about one in five hospitals in the county currently uses the approach, in part because the technology can be costly and complicated for smaller institutions. A California law enacted last year requires hospitals statewide to begin presumptive eligibility screening by July 2027. The county effort is intended to help hospitals prepare and make the technology more accessible. The Hospital Association of Southern California has agreed to obtain a digital screening system for member hospitals, using collective purchasing to reduce costs. L.A. Care, a nonprofit health plan serving more than 2.5 million low-income county residents through Medicaid, has committed $2 million toward setting it up. The county itself does not have funding to pay for the system, and the partners have yet to settle on how to finance it over the long term. It is also unclear how many of the county’s 88 acute-care hospitals will participate. Officials are working to improve the information used to assess eligibility. They hope to connect the system to state tax records, which could provide more reliable income data than current screening tools that may rely on estimates. Shah said the system would not eliminate medical debt on its own, but argued that preventing unaffordable bills is a public-health measure. Hospitals also face expensive collection efforts that may target patients who are unlikely to pay. Adena Tessler, a regional vice president of the hospital association, said providers can spend time pursuing debts that are not collectible. The project will depend on hospitals adopting the system and maintaining it beyond its initial setup. But supporters say making financial aid easier to access could reduce both the burden on patients and the waste involved in trying to collect unpayable bills.