Save Time and Sticker Shock When a Hospital Buys Out Your Doctor’s Office

Save Time and Sticker Shock When a Hospital Buys Out Your Doctor’s Office

I’d like to share a little something with you about health care and health insurance. Hopefully you never need this information, but my fear is that you might indeed need it for yourself or for a loved one. Of late there have been a number of hospital systems that are buying out individual doctor’s practices. This happened to me earlier this year In January. We were notified that my allergist’s office was being purchased by University Health. My allergy shots in January cost $10.50. In February, after University Health took over, those shots suddenly became $85!! In the same office, for the same type of shots, and given by the same person! (Prefer to watch this in video form? Click here!)

It took me a lot of time to dig into billing practices – how things were billed, how things were coded. In the end, it was determined that I was being charged as a hospital patient, and University Health felt this was correct even though I wasn’t in their hospital. When I approached the allergist’s office about this, apparently I was not the only one who was upset. All of the patients were up in arms about it. Thankfully the practice manager at the allergy office went to bat for all of us. She took in the “before” bills and the “after” bills and sat down with leadership at University Health. University Health agreed to start charging us the way that we had been charged previously before they took over – not as a hospital visit, but as a doctor’s office visit.

You might be asking what this has to do with time management. In total, I spent almost four hours dealing with this situation. If you ever have to deal with this, you now know how to jump right to the chase:

*check your explanation of benefits

*check to see how you were charged

*check to see if you were charged as a hospital visit instead of just a doctor’s visit

Well, fast-forward to today. I found out that a different doctor’s office was purchased by a different hospital system, and the same type of billing practices are about to start! If you find yourself (or a loved one) in this situation, here’s what you need to do:

1 Try to get ahead of it by always requesting before you walk into your appointment what your patient responsibility is going to be. That way you know ahead of time what you’re up against because if you have that appointment, and then later find out there’s a billing issue, you are going to have to spend a lot of time and effort trying to reverse it. And you may not be able to get it reversed. So ask for your patient responsibility ahead of time.

2 If you discover that they are billing you as a hospital visit when you are not in a hospital, make sure that you have saved your before bills and your after bills to show that you have not been present in a hospital.

3 Hopefully you don’t have to do this, but you might – and that would be to file a grievance or dispute. You’d dispute the charges through your insurance company’s procedures and/or the hospital’s procedures. Chances are the hospital is going to win, which leads to…

4 You can find a different doctor’s office. I know I don’t want to do this for my current situation, but if it becomes a choice between paying $200 for an appointment versus $49 for an appointment, I’m afraid I might have to change doctors even though I don’t want to.

Hopefully you don’t need this information, but it’s looking like a lot more hospitals will be buying out those individual doctor’s offices. Please use this information as necessary if/when you encounter this situation. Good luck!

 

 

 

For tips on how to save time in other areas of your life, check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.

Improve your time management!

About Helene Segura, M.A. Ed., CPO®

As The Inefficiency Assassin™, Time Management Fixer Helene Segura empowers professionals on the go with the tools to slay lost time. Personal inefficiency at work leads to increased stress levels, lower morale, higher absenteeism, more turnover – and rising spending on employee health care and hiring. Why not improve productivity, decrease stress levels, and increase profits instead?The author of four books – two of which were Amazon best-sellers – Helene Segura has been the featured organization expert in more than 200 media interviews. She has coached hundreds of clients to productivity success and performance improvement by applying neuroscience and behavioral modification techniques to wipe out destructive, time-wasting habits.Helene turns time management on its head by sharing both client case studies and pop culture examples to teach her mind-bending framework for decreasing interruptions, distractions and procrastination so that companies can spend more time generating revenue.

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