Healthcare Finance Direct (HFD)

Independent Sources

Shown for context — not merged with USAComplaints' own numbers.

Contacts

• Official website: https://gohfd.com/
• Patient / customer support (Mon–Fri 8am–11pm EST, Sat 9am–5:30pm EST): 877-874-3877
• Provider support: 877-272-5549
• Customer support: [email protected]
• Legal matters only: [email protected]
• Fax listed on BBB: 661-616-4401

Locations

Paying HFD for dental or medical treatment? What to check

Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC, doing business as HFD, is not the healthcare provider you saw for treatment. According to HFD's own patient FAQ, "HFD helps you pay for your healthcare costs over time … We work with your healthcare provider to set up easy, secure installment agreements. We service these agreements so your healthcare provider can focus on care." HFD's site states plainly that it "is not your healthcare provider and is not a traditional bank or loan company. Instead, HFD partners with your provider to set up payment plans." HFD's site also mentions a separate "Bank Loan Program" issued by Hatch Bank — check your own agreement to see which product and which parties apply to you.

Fees on an HFD plan "vary by provider, state, and agreement type" and are spelled out in your Retail Installment Agreement; HFD's FAQ gives late fees, non-sufficient-funds (NSF) fees, and credit-card processing fees as examples. HFD's FAQ says its agreement "allows us to debit recurring payments until your procedure cost with appropriate interest is paid off in full," and "If for any reason you miss one of the recurring payments, we may recoup that payment the following month, so you may see multiple charges as we get you current with your agreement." HFD's FAQ also says applying "involves only a soft credit check and never a hard check which will not affect your credit score." Separately, HFD's privacy notice lists reporting "to credit bureaus" among the everyday business purposes for which it shares information, so the soft application check does not mean an account can never appear on a credit report — ask HFD how your agreement is reported.

• Find your signed agreement and read the APR, fee schedule, and any promotional (e.g. 0% interest) terms before assuming a charge is wrong.
• Call (877) 874-3877 (Mon–Fri 8:00am–11:00pm EST, Sat 9:00am–5:30pm EST) to change your payment date, ask about paying off early, or set up another arrangement.
• Ask for a written payoff quote and a paid-in-full letter once you've cleared a balance, and keep it.
• If the problem is with the treatment itself — not the payment plan — contact your provider first. HFD's FAQ says "your provider will instruct HFD to refund any payments you may have made," and that if you can't reach the provider, "we will also reach out to the provider on your behalf." HFD also states that when a patient disputes what their provider delivered, "HFD sides with the patient and facilitates repayment unless the provider is able to provide proof that the patient is not adhering to their dispute policy" — HFD's own stated policy, not independently verified here.
• Keep records of your agreement, payment history, and any calls or emails with HFD or your provider.
• If a dispute isn't resolved, you can file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at consumerfinance.gov/complaint or with your state's financial regulator.
• Check your credit reports for how the account is reported, especially if a provider closed or a payment was disputed.

Consumer-reported complaint themes on HFD's BBB profile, as displayed there, include fees and late fees not clear on invoices, a credit card not being accepted as payment for a loan type, and disputes over a payoff amount or a promotional 0% plan — HFD answered each of the displayed complaints, in some cases offering a fee waiver after a payment arrangement or a paid-in-full letter.

Connecticut, California and Illinois regulator actions

Connecticut's Department of Banking issued a Temporary Order to Cease and Desist and Notice of Intent against HFD on April 10, 2025. The order asserted that HFD "has never been licensed as a small loan company in Connecticut" and described a Connecticut consumer who complained on December 26, 2023 about a service issue with a healthcare provider that had declared bankruptcy and stopped honoring the contract; the consumer kept receiving bills from HFD even though the July 14, 2023 contract had identified HFD "as the payment processor for the healthcare provider." HFD told the Department it was "a servicer of a retail installment contract for a healthcare provider," but the Department concluded the agreement was instead an unsecured small loan under Connecticut law — a loan of under $15,000 with an APR above 12% — which requires a small-loan license to collect payments on. The order alleged HFD received principal and interest payments from Connecticut borrowers without a license, and failed to provide information the Department had requested.

HFD received the order on April 24, 2025 and did not request a hearing; a Final Order was entered by default on June 23, 2025; it ordered HFD to cease and desist and imposed a civil penalty (the order's text states the amount inconsistently, as "One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($200,000)"). HFD's counsel asked the Department to reconsider on July 2, 2025, and HFD represented that it had failed to respond in time "due to an internal administrative oversight." HFD then cooperated with the Department, provided records of its Connecticut small-loan activity going back to January 2021, and applied for a Connecticut small loan license on July 18, 2025 (pending as of the settlement below).

On April 8, 2026, HFD and the Department signed a Consent Order. HFD agreed to its terms "without admitting or denying" the Department's allegations; the order also bars HFD from publicly denying the allegations or suggesting the order lacks a factual basis, with limited exceptions. Under the order, HFD agreed to cease and desist from receiving principal and interest payments on Connecticut small loans without first obtaining a license, and from failing to make records available or otherwise cooperate with the Commissioner; to pay a $25,000 civil penalty; and, within 60 days, to refund amounts it received since January 1, 2021 above a 0% APR on loans of $15,000 or less (or $50,000 or less for loans made after October 1, 2023) while it was unlicensed, by checks to the consumers listed in the order's Exhibit A. The June 2025 Final Order was vacated as part of the settlement. If you are a Connecticut HFD customer from that period, the order specifies that any refund check would arrive in an envelope marked "IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED BASED ON A SETTLEMENT WITH THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT DEPARTMENT OF BANKING" — that is the envelope to look for and open, not discard as junk mail.

Separately, California's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) licenses HFD as a debt collector under the Debt Collection Licensing Act (DCLA License No. 11394-99), effective March 21, 2024. DFPI issued a Desist and Refrain Order and Order Assessing Penalties on April 1, 2025, and HFD signed a Settlement Agreement on May 7, 2025 agreeing to a $3,500 administrative penalty. The DFPI record states the issue was that HFD's 2025 annual report, due March 15, 2025, was filed ten days late, on March 25, 2025. The stated factual basis was the late annual report filing.

Illinois. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's November 2025 enforcement report lists: "Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC – Southlake, Texas – Entered into a consent order related to operating as a collection agency without a license." The report gives no further details, such as a penalty amount.

Company background

According to HFD's own "About Us" page, Ron Johnson had started a software development company, and HFD was one of that company's customers; "in 2016, the Johnsons leveraged nearly all their family assets to purchase HFD," a purchase HFD's site attributes to Ron Johnson and his sons Tyler and Luke Johnson. The Better Business Bureau lists HFD's business start date as February 13, 2009. HFD's stated mission is to "make healthcare affordable by providing a better way to pay."

HFD's President and COO, Willie Shoffner, signed the company's April 2026 Consent Order with Connecticut's Department of Banking. Separately, an amended class-action complaint in Carrabis v. Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC (an allegation, not a court finding) describes "Ronald Johnson, Tyler Johnson and Luke Johnson" as "the three managers of Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC"; the Johnsons were named as individual defendants in the original complaint but were dropped from the amended complaint.

HFD was originally a California LLC headquartered at 1707 Eye Street, Bakersfield, California. Per Connecticut's Consent Order, HFD updated its NMLS-listed office address to 3120 Sabre Drive, Suite 320, Southlake, Texas on September 16, 2025, and converted its legal residency on NMLS from California to Texas on October 10, 2025; gohfd.com's current footer lists the Southlake address as its "Main Office" and a Bakersfield P.O. box as its mailing address. HFD is registered with the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System under NMLS ID 2529645.

HFD describes itself on its homepage as "The Preferred Financing Partner of Invisalign" and lists dental, orthodontic, aesthetics/MedSpa, vision, audiology, and veterinary practices among the provider specialties it serves — claims made on HFD's own site, not independently verified here. HFD's current website is gohfd.com; an older domain, healthcarefinancedirect.com, returned a Cloudflare "Error 526 Invalid SSL certificate" when checked on September 27, 2026, and should not be treated as HFD's current site.

Complaint record: USAComplaints, CFPB, BBB, and Trustpilot, reported separately

Several sources track complaints and reviews about HFD, and this page reports each separately rather than blending them into one figure:

• USAComplaints: 0 complaints submitted about Healthcare Finance Direct or HFD on this site as of September 27, 2026.
• CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (company "Healthcare Finance Direct LLC.", checked September 27, 2026): 440 complaints filed March 4, 2022 through September 14, 2026 (162 in the last 12 months). By product: debt collection, 251; payday/title/personal/advance loan (combining product-name variants), 141; credit reporting, 17; debt or credit management, 10; credit card, 9. Top issues: attempts to collect debt not owed, 133; took or threatened to take negative or legal action, 54; charged fees or interest you didn't expect, 38; problem when making payments, 32; problem with additional add-on products or services, 32; false statements or representation, 24; problem with the payoff process at the end of the loan, 20. Top states: Florida (53), Texas (46), California (39), Georgia (24), New York (24), Virginia (23). HFD closed 426 of these complaints with an explanation and 10 with monetary relief, and had 4 in progress at the time checked; 413 were answered timely and 27 were not. The CFPB does not verify the facts alleged in complaints.
• BBB: HFD (listed as "HFD," Payment Processing Services, in Southlake, TX) has been BBB Accredited since October 16, 2023, with a BBB Rating of B — BBB's own page gives its "Reasons for rating" as "561 complaint(s) filed against business," The B is BBB's letter rating, separate from accreditation and from BBB's customer-review score. BBB shows 561 complaints in the last three years (111 closed in the last 12 months); separately, BBB's customer-review score is 4.48 out of 5 from 543 reviews. HFD answers the complaints BBB displays — recent examples concern fees and late fees not clear on invoices, a credit card not accepted as payment for a loan type, and a disputed payoff amount on a promotional 0% plan, and HFD's responses include fee waivers after a payment arrangement and paid-in-full letters.
• Trustpilot: a claimed profile (since July 2025) showing 4.8 out of 5 from 778 reviews, on a paid Trustpilot subscription. Trustpilot notes HFD has "no recent history of asking for reviews" and has "replied to 90% of negative reviews."

Because each source covers a different population, time window, and methodology, none of these figures is added to or averaged with any other. Readers may notice that HFD's BBB and Trustpilot review averages are high while its BBB complaint count (561 in three years) and CFPB complaint count (440 since 2022) are both substantial; this page reports that gap without drawing a conclusion from it.

Lawsuits naming HFD, including the SmileDirectClub cases

A CourtListener search for federal cases naming Healthcare Finance Direct, run September 27, 2026, found several individual and putative-class lawsuits, plus many bankruptcy dockets on which HFD appears (typically as a creditor). All of the following are allegations from filed complaints, not court findings, except where a dismissal or other disposition is noted.

Carrabis v. Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC (N.D. Ill., No. 1:24-cv-04566), filed June 3, 2024, is a putative class action brought by a patient who financed SmileDirectClub clear aligners in November 2023 — after SmileDirectClub's September 29, 2023 Chapter 11 filing and shortly before its January 26, 2024 conversion to Chapter 7 liquidation. The complaint alleges HFD kept collecting payments from SmileDirectClub customers who did not receive all of their contracted services, and that customers who wanted to stop paying were told they would be sent to collections and that their credit could be affected. The original complaint also named Ronald, Tyler, and Luke Johnson individually under RICO; the amended complaint, filed October 17, 2024, dropped the Johnsons as defendants. HFD's own court filing takes the position that the plaintiff authorized the payments and that HFD is only the payment processor, quoting the underlying SmileDirectClub Retail Installment Contract's language that "Buyer acknowledges and agrees that HFD is not a lender but rather the payment processing service provider of Provider," and describing itself as SmileDirectClub's "third-party payment processor." HFD moved to dismiss the amended complaint on November 7, 2024; the court entered an "Order on Motion to Dismiss AND Order on Motion to Supplement" on December 23, 2025, but the order's text was not available on CourtListener as of this check, so its outcome is not reported here.

Amaral v. Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC (S.D. Fla., No. 0:22-cv-60836) was a Florida state-court class action, removed by HFD to federal court on April 29, 2022. Per HFD's own notice of removal, the complaint alleged HFD sent text messages without the "prior express written consent" required by the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act. The case was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on May 12, 2022, about two weeks after removal.

Fatal v. Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC (E.D.N.Y., No. 1:21-cv-00111) was a Telephone Consumer Protection Act case filed January 8, 2021; the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice and the case was terminated on April 22, 2021.

Dorin v. Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC (E.D. Pa., No. 2:25-cv-04683) was filed August 14, 2025; HFD answered, the case was referred to a magistrate judge for settlement on January 14, 2026, and stipulations of dismissal were filed January 23 and March 20, 2026, so the case appears to have ended by agreement of the parties. The claims are not visible on CourtListener.

Dunn v. Healthcare Finance Direct LLC (S.D. Tex., No. 4:25-cv-05412) was brought by a self-represented plaintiff and reached federal court through a notice of removal filed November 12, 2025; the docket shows a "Dismissal" entered December 5, 2025 (the document's text is not on CourtListener).

Is Healthcare Finance Direct (HFD) Legitimate?

Healthcare Finance Direct, LLC is a real, operating company registered with the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System under NMLS ID 2529645, with a listed office at 3120 Sabre Drive, Suite 320, Southlake, Texas. It holds a California debt-collector license (DCLA License No. 11394-99, effective March 21, 2024) and, as of its April 2026 Connecticut Consent Order, had a Connecticut small-loan license application pending since July 18, 2025. Connecticut's Department of Banking alleged that HFD collected payments on what the Department classified as small loans to Connecticut consumers without a license there (under the settlement, HFD agreed to refund amounts above a 0% APR that it received from Connecticut consumers since January 1, 2021 while unlicensed); HFD settled that matter in April 2026 without admitting or denying the allegations, agreeing to a $25,000 penalty, consumer refunds, and to stop the unlicensed activity. California's DFPI separately penalized HFD $3,500 in 2025 for filing its annual report late — the order's stated basis was that late filing. Patients can reach HFD's customer support at (877) 874-3877 or [email protected]. This page assigns HFD no rating, score, or "scam" label of its own; readers can weigh the regulatory and complaint record above for themselves.

Court & Public Records

Frequently Asked Questions