This one is a doozy.
It arrived shortly before Christmas in with a batch of holiday greetings from friends near and far.
I read it, but it made no sense, so I put it aside to deal with after Christmas. Which would be now.
It's a collections letter from an outfit called Credit Bureau of Island County.
One reason this letter makes no sense is that I live in King County, so what is a collections bureau in Island County (out in the San Juan Islands) doing going after me?
The second reason it makes no sense is that is says I owe $158 to University Physicians. But as far as I know, I don't owe University Physicians anything. They certainly haven't been sending me any bills.
(A side note: This is University of Washington Medical Center, which bills patients twice--hospital charges, even when you see a doctor in clinic and are not admitted to the hospital, and physician charges. I've never been able to figure that one out.)
Round One
Round One is to send a letter to the collections agency disputing the charges. The letter says I must do this within 30 days. Otherwise, it says, "this office will assume this debt is valid."
So that letter will go off today. It also will include this line, "Do not call me regarding this matter. Any contact by your office must be by mail."
That prevents the collections agency from calling me 12 times a day with an auto-dialing machine. I know people who have given up and paid bills they didn't owe just to make this stop. But the collections agency cannot call you if you tell them not to. Most people don't know that.
Round Two
Round Two is to call University Physicians and ask if they did send a bill to this collections agency. Also to ask if they think I owe them money.
Round Three
Round Three is to complain to the appropriate government entities. This doesn't actually work all that well, but sometimes it gets rid of the collections agency.
As you can probably tell, I've had a lot of experience with medical billing errors.
For the record, the letter came from:
Credit Bureau of Island County
1175 SE Ireland Street, #201
Oak Harbor, WA 98277
(360) 675-5971, (800) 742-9129
The entire letter is in CAPS. Do they think that makes it scarier?
I sent the link to this post to a woman I know, Joana Ramos, who is probably best described as a patient advocate and lymphoma survivor, and this is what she said:
RE: your latest billing outrage-- Yikes!!!! sloppy, sloppy, sloppy...
During my treatment pre-BMT, due to coding errors made in claims, I got bills from a hospital in AZ, and a claim for a bone marrow biopsy denied b/c it was coded as "shoe orthotics." I also found places in my records where it said I had TB and breast cancer.
Give UW Physicians hell!
During my treatment pre-BMT, due to coding errors made in claims, I got bills from a hospital in AZ, and a claim for a bone marrow biopsy denied b/c it was coded as "shoe orthotics." I also found places in my records where it said I had TB and breast cancer.
Give UW Physicians hell!
Does it make me feel better or worse to know that I'm not alone?
See also:
@ Jeanne Sather 2008.
You know, I just KNEW this sort of thing was going to start happening when I got a letter from my insurance company rejecting a visit to my oncologist's office. I am sure it is a case of the wrong diagnosis code, or some other minutiae but, gosh, you think "you're not covering my cancer?" That always leaves ya with the warm fuzzies. And have a nice day on top of it!!!
Posted by: Cathy McDonald | December 29, 2008 at 08:33 PM