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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 05 2015, @05:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the are-the-codes-secret-are-they-safe? dept.

Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in the NYT that she has spent the past six months trying to figure out a medical bill for $225 that includes "Test codes: 105, 127, 164, to name a few. CPT codes: 87481, 87491, 87798 and others" and she really doesn't want to pay it until she understands what it’s for. "At first, I left messages on the lab’s billing office voice mail asking for an explanation. A few months ago, when someone finally called back, she said she could not tell me what the codes were for because that would violate patient privacy. After I pointed out that I was the patient in question, she said, politely: “I’m sorry, this is what I’m told, and I don’t want to lose my job.”" Bills variously use CPT, HCPCS or ICD-9 codes. Some have abbreviations and scientific terms that you need a medical dictionary or a graduate degree to comprehend. Some have no information at all. Heather Pearce of Seattle told me how she’d recently received a $45,000 hospital bill with the explanation “miscellaneous.”

So what's the problem? “Medical bills and explanation of benefits are undecipherable and incomprehensible even for experts to understand, and the law is very forgiving about that,” says Mark Hall. “We’ve not seen a lot of pressure to standardize medical billing, but there’s certainly a need.” Hospitals and medical clinics say that detailed bills are simply too complicated for patients and that they provide the information required by insurers but with rising copays and deductibles, patients are shouldering an increasing burden. One recent study found that up to 90 percent of hospital bills contain errors and an audit by Equifax found that hospital bills that totaled more than $10,000 contained an average error of $1,300. “There are no industry standards with regards to what information a patient should receive regarding their bill,” says Cyndee Weston, executive director of the American Medical Billing Association. “The software industry has pretty much decided what information patients should receive, and to my knowledge, they have not had any stakeholder input. That would certainly be a worthwhile project for our industry.”

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Tuesday May 05 2015, @06:22PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @06:22PM (#179188) Journal

    130$ to adjust some velcro!

    I want that job. I could adjust like 20 an hour.

    More importantly I'm glad you caught the rip off (not a Velcro joke).

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 05 2015, @06:33PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @06:33PM (#179192)

    Only better job would be professional bubble wrap popper. I would kick ass at that.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Tuesday May 05 2015, @07:34PM

    by Adamsjas (4507) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @07:34PM (#179217)

    Not sure he did catch the rip off in time to stop it though. Most people have insurance, and insurance just pays it.

    People make a big deal about these seemingly high charges. But if they had to pay the cost of the employee, (Nurse, or office-flunky as the case may be) for the time it took to deal with their admission and treatment, as well as the rental of that portion of computer equipment and the time to enter the data to print the wrist band, they would probably be more incensed.

    Are the charges actuarially determined? Maybe, maybe not. The old joke was that there were Yachts to pay for. But that hasn't been true for a long time. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-ailing-medical-system-a-doctors-perspective-1409325361 [wsj.com]

    • (Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday May 05 2015, @08:35PM

      by tathra (3367) on Tuesday May 05 2015, @08:35PM (#179257)

      there's still yachts to pay for, its just that now they're owned by the middlemen who do nothing but jack up prices to suck more and more money out of the system.