Re: writer needs experiences

I am not arguing that it is cheap

the problem is misrepresenting the cost the cost to the patient. How widespread is it >

Cindy wrote: 
ted rosenberg wrote:

You are completely wrong

Tests are flat billed. almost every procedure is flat billed. If I was US Healthcare, or the Blues, and I called up and asked what something would cost, I would be told immediately.

Anyone on the internet can look up Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements by code.

I did some system consulting for the clinics operated by a large urban health department, and the standard federally mandated billing system only captures the procedure code. There is no way to tell a third party payor anything but the location, date, procedure number and the patient. Not time, supplies, or the color of the nurse's scrubs.

SURE, if you go in to have your finger x-rayed, and have a stroke, the treatment of the stroke will be billed also, but so what. THAT is not an x ray of the finger.

Would you let the gas station tell you that they can't tell you the cost of an oil change because the transmission might fail out while you are there?

Then there is the radiologist. The hospitals are the patient's only point of contact. They KNOW that a radiologist has to read things, and they KNOW that it will be billed seperatly. The patient, who is trying to budget for the test doesn't!


If the hospitals did their job better, radiologists collection percent would probably be higher.


I am in surgery now for training. You are right, if the hospitals did their inventory job better, they would not miss billing those surgical supply used on patients. The reason why I am saying this is that in the break room that I stand-by, there is a chart put up on the wall indicating how much money they lost by forgetting to add the price of medical supply to the patient invoice. It was a six-digit figure.

Hospital is an expensive business indeed, average people can not imagine how much the running cost would be. My daily use of surgical caps, gloves, gowns, booties, masks and so on, they could be inexpensive items, but they are used one time and must be thrown away. I wonder who is paying those expenses.





--
"...in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the present"
Glen Cook
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