Reduce Medical Debt by Finding Common Medical Billing Errors
Day-by-day the cost of living is going on increasing.
Similarly, the cost of health care is also increasing.
High medical costs coupled with under-insured or uninsured patients is a significant factor to high medical bills.
However, there are many common billing errors that you must look for to reduce medical debt.
Below we discuss a few common medical bill errors.
You must receive and review your bills carefully for medical bill errors.
It is essential that you know what to look for in terms of medical bill errors.
First of all, you have to collect all medical bills, prescription drug bills and request itemized bills for each.
You must go through both the records and the itemized bills.
This will help you to identify over charges imposed, if any.
The records will tell you the details of all the services that were conducted for you.
So if the number of tests, services or procedures present in the bill is more than the number of tests present in your records then there is an error.
In such a situation, you must contact your doctor or hospital billing department and in many cases if you have it, your medical insurance company.
Another type of medical bill error arises due to duplicate bills.
In this case the same quantity will be billed twice.
So, you must cross check the bill after receiving it.
Also, the hospital authorities are not allowed to bill for time where services were improperly given or not given at all.
So, if you are charged for services you never received or did not receive as intended then you must bring it to the notice of the hospital authorities.
Billing should be done only for those tests, procedures, etc which were conducted successfully.
Phantom charges is another medical bill error.
Dishonest health care providers will bill the patient or your medical insurance for expensive treatments, tests or equipment you never received.
Sometimes, your insurance company will tell you a hospital or clinic is covered but the doctor working that day may not be in plan and thus your insurance may refuse payment which is very much looked at as an error on behalf of your insurance company.
Errors can also occur due to human mistakes where the billing personnel either misstate services and charges or they even forget to bill your insurance company.
Many times, the latter is the case so always make sure that when you receive a medical that insurance payments were applied.
Similarly, the cost of health care is also increasing.
High medical costs coupled with under-insured or uninsured patients is a significant factor to high medical bills.
However, there are many common billing errors that you must look for to reduce medical debt.
Below we discuss a few common medical bill errors.
You must receive and review your bills carefully for medical bill errors.
It is essential that you know what to look for in terms of medical bill errors.
First of all, you have to collect all medical bills, prescription drug bills and request itemized bills for each.
You must go through both the records and the itemized bills.
This will help you to identify over charges imposed, if any.
The records will tell you the details of all the services that were conducted for you.
So if the number of tests, services or procedures present in the bill is more than the number of tests present in your records then there is an error.
In such a situation, you must contact your doctor or hospital billing department and in many cases if you have it, your medical insurance company.
Another type of medical bill error arises due to duplicate bills.
In this case the same quantity will be billed twice.
So, you must cross check the bill after receiving it.
Also, the hospital authorities are not allowed to bill for time where services were improperly given or not given at all.
So, if you are charged for services you never received or did not receive as intended then you must bring it to the notice of the hospital authorities.
Billing should be done only for those tests, procedures, etc which were conducted successfully.
Phantom charges is another medical bill error.
Dishonest health care providers will bill the patient or your medical insurance for expensive treatments, tests or equipment you never received.
Sometimes, your insurance company will tell you a hospital or clinic is covered but the doctor working that day may not be in plan and thus your insurance may refuse payment which is very much looked at as an error on behalf of your insurance company.
Errors can also occur due to human mistakes where the billing personnel either misstate services and charges or they even forget to bill your insurance company.
Many times, the latter is the case so always make sure that when you receive a medical that insurance payments were applied.