Hooray for vacation!

Ahh, vacation. I'm catching up on sleep, enjoying some quality apron time (that's what my boss calls it when she hears me telling everyone I can't stay late because I need to go home and cook dinner), and getting a bunch of other small projects done. I haven't cleaned the house, but hey, I'm on vacation right?

Today I spent a large portion of my day sorting through bills, filing stuff, that sort of thing. I filled out the paper work for reimbursement through my health savings account, printed return labels for a few things we're returning to amazon.com, found my passport (not that it's any good to me now that my name is changed) and checked Hayzeus's medical records to see when his next set of vaccinations are due.

I spent at least an hour writing a scathing letter to MGH's Emergency Department because their billing department is completely incompetent. In November of 2005 I went to the ED's Walk-in clinic for some symptomatic treatment of a respiratory infection. They billed my Dad's insurance in November of 2006, a full year later. Basically the insurance company denied the claim because it was over a year after the time of service and because I was no longer receiving benefits from the policy. So then, three months later in February of 2007, MGH decided to bill me for it. I called to find out why it took them 15 months to bill me and they told me it was because the opening of the new ED caused delays. Piss poor excuse in my book, so I told them I was absolutely not going to pay the bill, especially since my insurance would have covered it if they'd submitted the claim in a timely manner.

They kept sending me bills and I kept telling them I wasn't going to pay it. Then, in August, my bill had a mysterious payment made on it. I soon found out that my Mom had made a payment on her account and they'd credited it to mine because we had the same first and last name. I called them and told them it needed to be credited to her account and the next bill they sent me had the credit removed, stating it had been transferred over to account #XXXXXXXX. So not only had they failed to double check they were applying it to the right account in the first place, they also listed my Mom's account number on MY bill.

It turns out that account numbers associated with individual patients are considered Protected Health Information. Can anyone say HIPAA violation?

But the last straw came today when I called them about a different bill. When I hurt my back at work I went to the Express Care clinic at MGH's ED. While I was there I game them the forms from my employer authorizing them to treat me and informing them of our worker's comp insurance company's name, address, and claim number. Still, I recieved a bill in the mail for the services provided to me that day. So again, I called to tell them they had their heads up their asses and they simply proved my point by telling me they didn't have any record of the letter from my employer authorizing them to treat me nor did they have record of our worker's comp insurance company's name, address, and claim number. I told the lady on the phone that I'd provided all of that information at the time of service, but she kept asking me for it as if I had it in front of me but was trying to keep her in the dark.

So I spent a lot of time tracking down my old insurance information, asking my Dad to look for the Explanation of Benefit forms to go along with the November 2005 visit, researching HIPAA, and composing an extremely curt letter for MGH's Emergency billing department, which I plan on sending copies of to the CEO of MGH, the Better Business Bureau, JCAHO, and maybe even my state rep, just because I can. I don't even care if they all think I'm some crazy person so long as MGH writes off my bill from November of 2005.

I also went to the dentist today and had the first of three crowns put on. It's weird having a whole tooth where I used to have fragments of one, but I'm pretty jazzed about it. I'm also excited because Joe and I beefed up our health savings accounts to pay for all my crazy dental work (and other health expenses he and I will certainly accrue) so the expense won't seem as painful for us.

The day after tomorrow we're going to my Mom's for Christmas. I guess that's Saturday, but I don't really know what day of the week we're on right now so I'm taking Joe's word for it. Right now I think I'm going to go make a beef pot pie with the left overs from last night's pot roast (and gravy, which I recently learned how to make from Joe's Mom!).