Tag Archive: Hospital
American Hospital Billing: An Overview
The cost of healthcare is perennially a hot-button issue in the United States. Regardless of your stance on who ought to be footing the bill, it’s worth taking the time to learn how the private hospital billing process works. The following is a simple primer on a complicated process: there are a huge number of considerations that go into hospital billing, and many bills pass between multiple firms, sometimes several times each if multiple audits are required. That said, even a simple bill will at least pass through these basic steps.
Patient Care and Coding
The first step is always to make sure the patient receives appropriate care. This is handled up-front by the check in process, which performs triage and obtains a basic health history. Then the patient is diagnosed and treated. Once discharged, the billing process begins properly, as the hospital inventories what was done. This creates a “code” …
Top Reasons You Have a Delayed Hospital Bill
You’re sorting through your mail and find a bill for an account you thought had been closed a long time ago. The medical field is especially prone to these long-term clerical frustrations. But why does this happen? Is there anything that you, as a consumer, can do to prevent these delayed charges? Unfortunately, the answer to the latter is not a great deal, but there are a few things that you can do to get ahead of the game. You are responsible for these bills, but it is nice to know why you are being charged.
Clerical Error
As nice as it sounds, these delayed charges are rarely bills you don’t have to pay. If an unexpected bill makes it to your mailbox, most of the time you are going to need to pay for it. Hospitals aren’t particularly susceptible to sending charges to the wrong patient (largely due to patient/doctor …