How To Pay Hospital Bills

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 03 Mei 2012 0 comments

How To Pay Hospital Bills By. M. Baylor: It's incumbent upon you to know how to pay hospital bills. You can't just rely on insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors to make sure your hospital bills get paid. This isn't to degrade health care providers and medical professionals, but the system is run by people and fallibility is a constant when humans are involved.
One common proof of human fallibility can be gleaned from just checking your medical bill. Errors and redundancies in postings are common. You can't trust the system to work just because you don't understand what is posted there. Statistics show that more than half of hospital bills have errors in them. It's not uncommon for patients to be billed twice for the same procedure!

Once you receive a statement of your medical costs, you need to ask for an itemized bill that details your received services, laboratory fees, surgical procedure fees, and after care costs during your stay at the hospital. It usually takes about a month for the hospital to send you the bill, so make your request early. This way you can pay hospital bills on time.

Before you pay hospital bills, first make sure your bill contains no errors:

    * Look at the name on your bill and ensure that it's the same as on your insurance policy. That could be grounds for an insurance company not to pay hospital bills.
    * Check your social security and insurance numbers as well as your patient number and make sure they are correct.
    * Check the number of days you were billed for in the document and make sure the records line up with the actual number of days of your stay. Most hospitals don't charge the day of your discharge, so make sure to clarify this with your hospital.
    * Are you billed for a private room when you actually stayed in a semi-private room? It is your responsibility to know how much each room costs so you can check for discrepancies.
    * Did you get the five-star treatment in the hospital? Believe it or not, this could place additional burden on your pockets because the kind of hospital care you get depends on the level of care your doctor orders.
    * Are you billed separately for nursing care? Most often, nursing fees are included with the cost of the room, but there are hospitals that ask for another set of charges for the nurses.
    * Check for redundant charges. You don't want to pay for the same thing twice when you pay hospital bills.

The hospital pharmacy usually charges more for medicines that you can buy for less somewhere else. Tell your doctor beforehand that you would like a separate prescription for medicines to keep costs down. Every bit of savings will help you pay hospital bills.

It's important that you keep your own records of all the services and medicines you receive in the hospital. Personal records will help you counter-check your statement of account before you pay hospital bills.

M. Baylor, of Hurst Texas, grew up with both parents as doctors. Laws concerning medical care governed his fascination as he grew up. As a paralegal in Allmand & Lee, Marcus maintains an informative blog about medical bill debt, medical litigation, and the latest in the health care reform bills and government programs.

The Secrets About Medical Bills blog seeks to address all sorts of legal questions that people have on the subject. Providing insight and alternatives for those saddled with medical debt and issues that arise through no fault of their own, Marcus seeks to bring help to people who suffer financially due to health issues. Visit Marcus's blog to find out the latest legal tactics used to fight on behalf of the patient against health insurance companies. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com