Anyone work for a hospital or their billing department? Private or public...

Anyway, I went to a private hospital (nearest one) and my bill was approx. $10,000. Since we paid a % cash before we left they said they would knock-down the bill 40-60% well we got 50% off the total bill.

I`m wondering if I can negotiate this even further. Either by removing an item from the bill or simply asking for the other 10% off.

What upsets me the most is my CT Scan, they did 2 because the guy wasn't sure the first one went through... and if you've gotten a CT Scan you know that to take a second took an additional 30 seconds and I was charged nearly the full amount again (3311 not 3487) to take the darn second image. *GRR**

So, anyone have any tips or suggestions for negotiating this down some more?

Thanks!

I think if you got 50% off you a lucky fellow. In my book, when a service provider doesn't get it right, they don't get paid. However, that said, I suspect if you argued the point they would say the first discount covered the botched CT scan, so you are only paying for the second scan anyways.

Too bad you have money. If you were broke it wouldn't have cost you a dime.

Could you not just sue the hospital for the first botched CAT scan for the fear and distress of going through the frightening procedure for a second time especially of you suffer from claustrophobia. You could even argue in court that the CAT scan was a financial scam by the hospital when a much more cost effective way of determining a medical diagnosis was available to you, but was not offered. Get a lawyer to seize the hospitals billing records for the CAT scan machine to see how many previous patients ended up paying twice for a single CAT scan.

Have a lawyer send a letter to the hospital medical record department requesting a copy pf your medical record, accompanied by a medical record release form, signed by you and authorizing the lawyers access to that record. This often gets the attention of the hospital risk manager, who will then halt all collection efforts. Errors in patient care are not uncommon. (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1117772)

As I wrote on another thread, go through each bill and make sure this person or group (some doctors & nurses use a billing companys) actually treated you.

I have found between 5-10% of all medical stays my family has had, not single day issues, have been bogus overbilling. if you don't recognize a doctor sending you a bill, find out how this person treated you.

Since recognizing this trend we make it mandatory to get business cards from every nurse or doctor and who they bill through. If they don't have one we take down their info on a sheet we made for tracking

My most recent example is last year I spent a week in the hospital. I got a bill for $400 from a doctor I did not recognize. After challenging the bill, it turns out all he did was review my chart at the nurses station one night and billed me for his consult.

But you got 50% off your bill, your way ahead already.

Pleasant and persistent goes a long way. Talk to them and talk to
them again.

At some point then you can leave it behind knowing
you did everything you could.

"Bogus overbilling" is rampant in hospitals.

Is your bill itemized (and I mean REALLY itemized) in English, or it is in codes? If in codes, go to your hospital and either get a list of the codes they use, or insist they go over ever single entry with you personally. Don't trust to memory -- write down every translation as you go.

You will probably find that you were charged for things they they didn't do and didn't give you. The husband of a friend of my sister's went into the ER for a suspected heart attack. When his wife insisted on details of the bill, among other things, they found they were being charged for a baby bassinet and a baby over-crib mobile. They also charged something like $12 for a single aspirin which they didn't give when they found his wife had given him one immediately when the problem started, and quite a few other things.

None of this is accidental.

Yeah, definetely scrutinize the charges. BTW, a hospital doesn't bill for a physician, it's the physician that bills.

For that extra CT, did they have to give you dye twice, once, or not at all? If you get billed for 2 doses, I'd raise hell, since it can be bad for kidneys in high doses.

Anyway, 1/2 off sounds about right for folks paying cash. Sorry.

Some of it is accidental. A lot of it is poor systems design, antique or nonexistent computer systems, and poor management. The best and brightest administrators generally go to jobs in which they can get stock options, not into health care. There are plenty of smart providers in hospitals. CEO's-not so much. And some of it is because most of the revenue comes through contracts with insurers who negotiate a flat rate for a diagnosis- so, no matter what the actual product and service charges are for my fractured femur, my insurance company pays the hospital $4500 each for me and for each of the 20 other insured fractured femur patients cared for that calendar quarter. Tends to reduce the amount of attention paid to getting the charges right on any individual patient. Like most things, it is probably not a conspiracy of criminal geniuses-more like a three stooges comedy with stethoscopes.

My sister works in the Providence system of the western U.S. It is run by monkeys whose previous job was having nails hammered into their brains (and I don't mean just the CEOs).

Your bit about the insurers is true, but the extra percentage that is regularly paid by the victim is where the 'variations' happen. And I would not consider them 'criminal geniuses' by any stretch of the imagination; they're just playing the percentages, and most people don't check.