Hostpital Gear Change.
I am going to interrupt my ongoing series with the car companies to rail on Hospitals and health care information. So recently a friend of mine had a call from the collection agency… claiming she owed 1250.00 USD to them by the 30 of November or they were going to report to the credit agency. Why? Because that was her bill that her insurance didn’t cover (supposedly) from when she broke her toe back in April… that no one told her until now that she owed. No calls from the hospital and no letters in the mail. However, that’s not the point alone… so I was concerned… her appointment went like this. She broke her toe, went into the doctors office… the doctors looked at it… grabbed pulled it in place and wrote a script for a pain reliever. No X-rays, not even the script was filled… $1400. She was told while she was there it would be 150$ up front.
Now I thought this was a bit high. So I went to do some research. I called several Hospitals asking for help. When I got a hold of a help line they wanted all my information and constantly reminded me of rules and regulations about confidentiality… So I had to pretend it was my injury. It boiled down to this. No one could tell me how much anything costed. Not even a ball-park not even an estimate. I called their billing services and they basically told me it was case by case… understandable… but a broken toe isn’t life threatening and there has to be a break down somewhere.
Four hospitals later and dealing with some of the most rude people on the phone I have ever…EVER… talked to. They were more concerned with following protocol for something as simple as a broken toe. In fact I had one hang up on me, telling me,
“Sir, go to a Doctor I don’t have any prices here. Do you need help or not? If so, go to your Doctor… (click.)”
“I have no idea, they don’t tell us that here. This is a help line, not a pricing line.”
“Look do you need help, or financing? If so call our billing offices.
Me: Do you know the number?
Them: No use whatever you used to find this number and call them.”
Seriously? On the fourth attempt I finally got someone to tell me an idea of how much it should cost… but that was after some serious heckling and over ten minutes on the phone. The problem in this is the way healthcare is being handled… once you get help your stuck. There isn’t any upfront or would you like to have this done (This is strictly for immediate non-life threatening circumstances… if you were dying… options is not what you have/want.) questions and costs.
There needs to be more upfront hostpital client interaction. Most hospitals use an outside source to get the money for whatever procedures were done… meaning the doctors and nurses have no idea how much a procedure or medicine costs. That seems kind of odd. How many professions do you know where the operators have no idea what the cost of whatever their selling or doing.
