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So I was scrutinizing a hospital bill the other day when I noticed on the paperwork there was a fee for a prostate exam. Now I know the world has changed, but I certainly haven’t done anything personally to warrant the need for that kind of man exam. Clearly an error on their end, so to speak. I only went in for dehydration and barfing.
I had a friend come over to my house about six months ago crying because she was overcharged on her hospital bill as well. We sat down together and went over it with a magnifying glass because we’re both old and can’t half see. What we discovered was enough to give one or both of us a heart attack.
For starters, the bill showed that she had been given a pregnancy test before her minor surgery. I did read once that a woman my friend’s age had given birth but she ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records for her untimely achievement. I’m sure they won’t be updating that page with my friend’s info anytime soon. The test was unnecessary, so we highlighted it for a later dispute.
The next mistake we found on her bill was for two mammograms. That’s like getting an X-ray on your hand when a finger is broken but being billed for five x-rays. We highlighted that line item as well.
It appears that she was also up-charged for medication. Now restaurants up-charge for food items and that’s bad enough but at least that’s less expensive than medication. Perhaps it was a fancy designer drug that they gave her. This is why I don’t spend money on anything designer even blue jeans. If the generic jeans work just as well then I’m sure the drugs do, too. We highlighted that charge as well.
We also found a coding error. She was billed for a craniectomy she never had. She was released from the hospital the same day, so I’m pretty sure that if that kind of procedure was actually done on her, they would have at least kept her overnight. The drugs listed on her bill didn’t appear to be strong like those used for brain surgery so perhaps she was conscious during the alleged procedure. That would have been a festive and nightmarish event. She said she doesn’t remember getting the surgery so that ill-coded line item received a big fat yellow mark.
She was charged $10 for a Band-Aid. I told her to call me the next time, and I’ll just bring a box of Band-Aids to the hospital for her. I think she paid $7 for the box of 1,000 in her medicine cabinet.
I must say, however, that the hospital food was actually pretty good. I don’t know why people say they don’t like it. I ate all the meals she didn’t want. I found the charges for her food to be pretty fair.
Her overpriced insurance company didn’t pay for
very much of the bill because they claimed that a lot of it wasn’t medically necessary. However, if they billed her for a craniectomy then what part of all her treatment for it wasn’t medically necessary, for cryin’ out loud?
We need hospitals and doctors, and nurses are pretty great so all I’m saying is that mistakes often add to the bill’s expense, and we should check them.
Anngee Quinones-Belian of Murphy is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her humor column runs every other week. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.