After a hospital stay, it is a good idea to review your bill line by line. There are often errors made and they can be corrected, especially if you approach it in a positive manner. We all have heard the horror stories of $75 aspirins being administered, and it is those stories that cause some distrust in hospitals.
One young nurse recently had an eye opening experience as she was reviewing the bills from her husband’s recent hospital stay. It appears he had been scheduled to be released on a particular day, and that wasn’t communicated somehow, causing him to have to stay an extra day. There were excessive charges for administering medication 7 times per day when it was only prescribed 4 times per day. And then there was the charge for $875 for one item that she knew from her hospital work should have only been around $80. Clerical error. By the time she was finished, she had discovered nearly $7000 of incorrect charges.
So some good advice to all is to ask for an itemized bill and make sure that you check through it carefully. If you don’t know much about them, then pay cash and sit down with your doctor, not the billing department, to review each individual charge on your bill and what it means and take notes and ask questions. Finding out what you are being billed for, and don’t just accept it at face value.
There are other options to help you come to a satisfactory resolution. Most cities have patient advocacy groups available to offer you free advice. They can direct you on what steps you need to take to get things corrected. And your state insurance commissioner can advise you if you need help with your insurance company.
By having health insurance, we want to be taken care of in case we need it. There is no need to be intimidated by a bunch of codes and numbers on the bill. The hospital can tell you in words what all of them mean. Medical bills can be filled with errors, and you certainly don’t want to pay excess charges. Do your homework, and you’ll get the corrections made that you need.
It may seem tough to find affordable individual health insurance, now a days, however there is a solutions. check out www.individualhealthquotes.com and you can obtain health insurance quotes from multiple companies at one time.
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