Reply #8: Hospitals & outside billing departments are TROUBLE

[Dora]

Hospitals that refuse to honor their agreements with patients and contract out their billing and collections are creating this trouble for us. The billing/collections agencies don't give a damn if the hospital told a patient that they could make monthly payments, and they harass patients with outright lies in their efforts to collect payments.


Three stories:

1) 10 years ago, my husband had to visit the ER while uninsured for injuries from a bicycle accident. The hospital agreed to a payment plan. Five months later, his account went to collections without warning - and he'd been making payments according to what he thought was a mutual agreement. The outside collections agency refused to negotiate with him, demanded payment in full, and my husband then filed bankruptcy, and they didn't get anything more than what they'd already received.

2) Last year, I had outpatient sinus surgery. I was insured, and was responsible for %20 of hospital charges. At my intake meeting with the hospital business office, I paid a $150 deposit for services on a credit card, and the person doing my intake agreed to accept monthly payments of $75 until my balance was paid off. My husband was there to witness it. Four weeks after my surgery, a billing agency called and asked for payment in full. I told the caller we were making monthly payments, and the hospital had agreed to it. He said there was no agreement. I very politely told him he was wrong, that in fact there was an oral agreement that had been witnessed by my husband. I also told him that if his records did not show the agreement, that was a fault of the record, and that he needed to take it up with his supervisor. I told him that we would continue to pay monthly as agreed to in my intake meeting.

3) A coworker had inpatient surgery at the same hospital I had been to. She set up a payment plan during her intake session. She also received a call from an outside billing agency demanding payment in full, and telling her that she did not have a payment plan. She gave them the same hell I did, and they backed off.