Dealing with Health Junx, part 8

This past week, since my last post, I received a call from the BUMC Otolaryngologic people, and I talked to them about my dilemma. They have extended my account by 90 days, starting from August 20th. This is getting dangerously close to spilling over into 2008! Ugh!

I'm calling the pathologists now, since I haven't heard from them this week (and they said I should hear back from them).

That was mostly painless. It sounds like my account has been put on hold with Argent (they will call me back to confirm this). The lady said that something would be decided in about 30 days, not a week, as I had been hoping. The writing of my appeal has been delayed even further :-\

Ugh.

-Kyle

Dealing with Health Insurance, part 7

Quick note:

I was just called by Argent, the bill collection people. No, wait, before I write this, I need to talk to the pathologist billing people again, if at all possible.

Calling...

And done. Likely what happened is that since the pathologists had asked my collection account to be flagged, they decided to call me. Instead of just asking me what was up, they acted like I was about to run out of time. Naturally, the lady was very short with me, since I'd had an account with them since April. I asked many times whether this call had to do with the fact that I had just talked to the Pathology office today, but this question was never answered. Instead, she asked other questions of me. Then, she told me she was going to resubmit my claim to insurance. She said she had done that in June (Chickering said no resubmissions had ever been made when I talked to them this morning) but would try it again.

After we were done, I realized that their resubmission might overwrite the resubmission pathology was going to make today. I don't want them to interfere; Pathology's submission will change the code and hopefully fix things! So, as I wrote above, I just then called the pathology people. They said not to worry, their submission would take precedence. They also answered the question the collection people did not: they had probably called me because pathology had asked today for the hold.

Whew! So apparently there's a 60-day hold on my account with Argent, or until they hear back from Chickering, or something. I honestly don't actually know. I just hope I hear back from them soon next week.

-Kyle

Health Insurance, part 6

This is coming a lot later than I would have liked. Unfortunately, upon reaching Michigan, I found that I could not check my voice mail. Of course, I didn't have very good Internet access there either, but I stole away to the airport to work on things a little bit there. I contacted some people at the BMC, and they faxed some of my statements up to where I was. I looked through the insurance brochure and found a few interesting things.

When I finally got back to Boston this week, I noticed that I still had not received a revised EOB from Aetna concerning my Pathology charges. In order to appeal the insurance decision, I need all the EOBs so I can try to sort things out. Thus, I needed to figure out why this hadn't gone through. Call sequence!

First: Chickering. Gotta find out why I hadn't gotten it. Answer: They hadn't received a request for resubmission. They said I needed to call the pathologist for resubmission. I looked back through previous posts to find the pathologist's number, but I realized that bigger billing office I had finagled my way to find might be the problem; I probably needed to talk to someone else.

Second: Chickering. I called back, asking whether they had a number for the Pathologist. They did! I'll probably need this one later: (800) 214-2888 (Pathologist).

Third: Pathologist. This is another billing office. I gave them my information, and the extremely helpful lady said she saw where they might have believed it to be listed as "routine" (this is why it was denied by Chickering, even though it's on the same day as my big surgery. Thanks, Chickering). The lady said that it was unfortunately in collections, so they were unable to simply resubmit it. I couldn't believe this. I had contacted the collection agency and billing before about this. How had this happened again? I fixed my mailing address with the billing office and gave them my phone number. The lady was very sympathetic; she came up with the following plan: they would change the billing code and talk to chickering. At the same time, they'll ask the collection agency to put the account on hold, in order to not destroy my credit. (Isn't it already pretty much dead after this entire fiasco?) Hopefully this will all work, though she couldn't say that it definitely would not affect my credit. Ugh.

This would all have been avoided had one of the following two things happened:

1) My address been recorded correctly by BMC. I spelled out the name of my street to the woman who put it in the computer, and my father was sitting next to me. How did it get off by two letters? This prevented me from seeing any bills from people until far too late.

2) Chickering/Aetna had sent me any Explanation of Benefits. They didn't, until I specifically called them up and asked for them. I couldn't even access them online, and no one I talked to knew why I hadn't been sent anything.

Either of these two things would have let me know that I was getting charged for anything before bills were sent to collections.

This has been a nightmare, and the worst part is that I have to be the middleman for the whole thing. There are too many companies and parties that I have had to deal with and are incapable of interacting with each other without a personal request from me.

I can only hope that I actually get this EOB sometime soon.

Before quitting, I will make one more call. This time to the Otolaryngologist's office, to tell them that this whole thing is under review.

Call...

Wow, they apparently have someone there who is well-associated with my account:-P I talked to someone and she said I needed to talk to the person who has handled my account in the past. That person is out of the office, so I left them a voicemail with my name, account number and phone number. I hope to hear back from them on Monday.

Okay, I'm tired and I have plenty of things to actually get done today. I'm sick of being the middle man to fix the incompetence of my insurance and all the different people billing me.

-Kyle