15 Phone Calls

TO: Albert B. Einstein, M.D., Executive Director, Swedish Cancer Institute
FROM: Jeanne Sather, cancer patient
DATE: March 7, 2007
RE: Billing Question

Last week, I tried to get an answer on the phone to a very simple question about my bill from the Swedish Cancer Institute: What drugs did I receive on December 21, and what was I charged for each of them?

I am a fairly new patient to Swedish, and the explanation of benefits from my insurance company (WSHIP) listed four line items with the same label: “drugs requiring detailed coding,” followed by four dollar amounts.

I am writing to you because it took me 15 phone calls to get an answer to my question.

I’ve been a cancer patient for a long time, more than eight years, and I’ve experienced a lot of runaround, but 15 phone calls?

Here they are:

Call No. 1: To the main Cancer Institute number at Swedish. The woman I talked to said there were several billing numbers and she wasn’t sure which one to transfer me to, so she transferred me to my doctor’s clinic.

Call No. 2: Dr. Rinn’s clinic. I explained what I wanted. The person I spoke to gave me this number: 888-294-9333.

Call No. 3: To the above number. Turns out this billing dept. only handles doctor’s bills. So I was given the wrong number by the clinic. The person I spoke to here gave me another number.

Call No. 4: 800-643-8207. I spoke to Tiffany at this number, which is apparently the regional billing office. I told Tiffany what I wanted. I gave her the date of service. I gave her my social security number, my home address, my phone number … She said she couldn’t help me.

I confirmed that she did indeed work in the regional billing office. She said she did. I asked why she couldn’t check to see what, exactly, I was billed for on December 21, and she said she didn’t have access to that information. She gave me the number for “clinical relations.”

I didn’t think I had a clinical relations problem, but maybe I was wrong.

Call No. 5: I called clinical relations. I told the person I spoke with, Mary, that she was the fifth person I had talked to so far that morning trying to get the answer to a billing question.

Mary apologized. She also gave me the names and numbers of three people, any one of whom could help me, she said.

Call No. 6: Eunice Kinney. 386-2372. No answer. Voice mail.

Call No. 7: Rose Lagmay. 386-6243. No answer. Voice mail.

Call No. 8: Gloria. 215-6233. No answer. Voice mail.

Call No. 9: Back to Eunice. She answered. She said she couldn’t help me, she only handles questions about doctor bills. Did I call Mary back to set her straight? I did not.

Call No. 10: Left a message for Rose.

Call No. 11: Back to my doctor’s office. Asked if they could tell me what drugs I was billed for on December 21, since my doctor obviously wrote the orders. The person I spoke to said she couldn’t access that information. I asked if the treatment center might be able to. Maybe.

Call No. 12: The treatment center. No, they couldn’t tell me, but the pharmacy probably could.

Call No. 13: The pharmacy. No, they couldn’t tell me, but maybe pharmacy billing could.

OK. Deep breath.

Call No. 14: Pharmacy billing. I spoke to Jackie. First, she said she couldn’t help me, and suggested that I call the regional billing office (Call No. 4). I explained that I had already talked to them and was told they couldn’t answer my question. Jackie took pity on me, took the information again, and said she would call me back in a few minutes.

Call No. 15: From Jackie. She gave me the names of the four drugs I received on that date and the amount I was billed for each one.

Conclusions:

1. This was an incredible waste of my time. I have cancer. My energy is limited. I greatly resent having to spend two hours on the phone getting the runaround from people who clearly did not want to help me get the answer to a very simple billing question.

2. Mary and Jackie should be commended, although some of the info. Mary gave me was wrong. If she’s giving me wrong info., she’s probably giving it to other patients on a daily basis.

3. I would fire Tiffany. She’s incompetent.

4. Staff who answer the main phone number, and clinic staff, need some training. They ought to be able to transfer calls to the correct billing department. I told each person I spoke to that I was calling about a bill for chemotherapy.

I’m also wondering why Swedish charges almost twice as much as the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance does for the same drugs, but I’ll leave that question for another time. I write a blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient, and I wrote a blog post about this experience. I have enclosed a copy for your enjoyment.

See: The (High) Cost of Cancer Treatment: 2

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Dean Forbes]

Did you receive a reply to your letter?

[Jeanne]

Nope, never did.

I did, however, receive a letter from Dr. Einstein asking me to make a financial donation to Swedish.

I'm about to send him a follow-up ...

Jeanne

[jeanne]

It should be noted that Dean Forbes is a PR flack employed by the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which is locked in fierce combat with Swedish for your cancer business (At least, it's fierce on the SCCA side--I don't know how competitive the folks at Swedish feel).

Another cancer blogger just sent me an e-mail saying that she gets e-mail from Dean whenever she writes anything about SCCA. She said he seems to spend all his time trolling the Web looking for mentions of SCCA.

I've been treated at both cancer centers and have had good and bad experiences at both.

The care at Swedish is quite a bit more expensive--I have the bills to prove it.

And both Swedish and SCCA are more expensive than Northwest Hospital, where I go now to see my medical oncologist. My radiation oncologist is at Swedish--which just sent me another bill with an impossible date of service. Isn't that illegal? Fraud, or something.

[ShannaLee]

You can thank the conservatives for non-profits trying to run themselves like business - which we who know anything about non-profits know is a ridiculous idea.

You can also thank them for hospital deregulation and for hospitals becoming FOR PROFIT rather than staying not-for-profit. This puts profits first - not patients.

What did Dean do exactly? It seems you are taking your frustrations out on someone who asked if your problems were addressed. It's useful to have an ally on the inside, so alienating him by calling him names doesn't seem smart. Use him to get to a higher official within the organization. Use him to get the rules changed. Ask him how he can help you.

It's not like he demanded you remove your post or stop talking about his organization or anything. It sounded to me like he was trying to help.

FYI - I'm a trained PR professional, and the partner of a cancer survivor. People in PR do typically troll the web for mentions of who we are working for. This is part of the job, to keep your fingers on the pulse of public opinion and to try and work from the inside to resolve any conflicts or issues.

[jeanne]

Shana--I think you misunderstood my post about Dean. Dean works for a COMPETITOR of Swedish, so he was delighted to see me write a post that criticized Swedish.

As far as Dean intevening on behalf of the patient who was criticizing SCCA, where he works, he got involved and--according to the patient--the folks on the medical side shared information about this patient with the PR guy that they shouldn't have shared--it was a HIPPA violation. Again, this is seconf hand information from another patient, but I have no reason to think she is not telling me the truth.

You said something about me calling Dean names--what was that about? Because I called him a PR flack? I come out of mainstream hard news journalism, and calling someone a PR flack is being polite.