Disputing unclear or incorrect hospital bills

Hospitals exist to help people recover from serious accidents or sickness.At the same time, hospitals can cause many people a large amount of stress and anxiety.Some of the procedures that take place in a hospital can be painful or uncomfortable.It can also be stressful because many times patients must entrust their lives, or at least their physical comfort, to a complete stranger.While this sort of trust is good, often the same trust is given to the people in the billing department.

Most hospitals either have a billing department or use a private billing company.At the end of each day, one of the nurses for each doctor writes the bills for the day.They send that to the billing department.There, someone types in the charges and bills the patients.This process is not full proof, and there is plenty of room for error.When hospital bills are not reviewed, patients can end up paying for services they never received. Disputing unclear or incorrect hospital bills should be a skill acquired by all patients.Here are a few tips for disputing unclear or incorrect hospital bills.

Keep a Mental Note

Even though visiting the hospital can be a stress filled or anxiety causing experience, patients must try to keep a mental note of all of the procedures done on them.Patients should make a mental note of which doctors work on them, what medicines are given them, what procedures are performed, and what materials are used.One way to do this is to bring a relative or friend to the hospital so they can remember everything that happens.This way when the bill comes, the patient will be able to recognize any charges that seem to be a mistake.

Ask Questions

Once a patient receives a bill for a hospital visit, they should review the bill and ask questions about anything they don't understand or that doesn't look familiar.Just like patients have every right to ask questions about procedures being performed on them, they also have every right to ask about charges on their bill.Patients should bring the bill to their doctor and ask about questionable charges.The doctor records every procedure on the patient's chart, so they will be able to verify certain charges.If the doctor is unavailable, many times the doctor's nurse should be able to help explain unfamiliar charges on a bill.

Dispute

Once a mistake has been found in a bill, a patient will need to dispute the mistake.While this process may seem scary, it really is not if the right approach is taken.Because the patient has verified mistakes with the doctor (or the doctor's nurse), the patient can go to the billing department with confidence.Patients should show the bill and explain that after consulting with the doctor it appears there is a mistake on the bill.

In most cases, because the patient has taken the time to talk to the doctor, the billing department will review the bill without many questions.This means that they will send the bill back to the doctor for verification.The doctor will fix the mistake, send it back to billing, and billing will issue a new bill.Sometimes the billing department will ask that the rest of the bill be paid, and other times they will wait for the problem to be resolved before requiring payment.

Extra Bill Statements

Because many billing departments have computer systems that automatically print out bills for accounts that have not been paid, it is possible that the patient will receive another bill for the same procedure.The patient should just save those bills until the problem has been resolved, and then bring them when they go to pay the corrected bill.