I recently went to visit my daughter in North Carolina, where proceeded to hand me a stack of medical bills. She couldn't make heads or tails out of them. One of the "bill's" was actually a statement from her insurance company showing total charges (for 2015), adjustments, payments and her balance. All she saw was the first number, $1632.00 and freaked out! She thought she owed this. I took everything back to California with me and told her I would sort it out.
First, I went to her insurance website, logged in and matched the bills with the charges.
Next, I made sure there were no "missing" bills.
Then I verified that the billed amounts due from her, were correct with the EOB's online.
Doing this, I found that one item on one of her bills had been denied by her insurance company. It looked like it was rebilled, yet, I didn't have a bill for it. The balance according to the webite should have been $25.45. I called the billing office to pay this. Since I wasn't the patient, (HIPPA privacy law), I had to have my daughter call and give the medical billing office permission to speak with me. The balance that I saw that was due was for an office visit copy ($25.00) and co-insurance $.045. This was for a February visit, but had just been paid by the insurance company in May. When I spoke with "Tianna", she stated the balance was $41.25, She indicated that the balance was past-due and sent to collections, so had fees added to it. This infuriated me! Just because they billed incorrectly and didn't get payment for 90 + days, they figured my daughter was in arrears. I asked to speak with a supervisor, as it wasn't my daughter's fault that they billed incorrectly. In a nutshell, I got this bill taken out of collections (it was just submitted the end of May), and only owed the original co-pay.
In conclusion, always look over your bills from your providers and match them up with the EOB's you get from your insurance company. If something doesn't seem right, call right away. Don't wait until it's too late and your providers place you in collections. Hopefully my daughter has learned a lesson from this!
