Brand new collection letter!!!

call the hospital. Tell them the situation and ask if you can have a payment plan with them.

 

no problem.

Here's how I would handle it if the Hospital won't play nice.

send a validation to the CA today. Include a restricted Cease and Desist--"Please cease and desist all contact with me regarding this account except through written correspondence". Your stand should be that as that you were not billed the Hospital didn't follow its obligations under the FCBA and handed over the account to them improperly. Tell them to return the account to the hospital immediately so that they can fix their error.

Now...hold firm to your demand for the validation. Perhaps someone was stupid and sent information which violated HIPAA requirements. Demand that the validation include a detailed itemization of services that were supposedly rendered.

At the same time send a letter to the administrator of the hospital. Not the business office. The administrator. Be polite and inform him that the hospital was incorrect to refer your account to a credit agency because of errors in billing. If you intend to pay the bill let him know this as well. Tell him that to help to correct this "misunderstanding" you have requested that the collection agency invovled return the account to the hospital. Ask him to do the same. Include the contact information.

Play hardball with the CA, play nice with the hospital. This will hopefully get you what you want and looks really good if you need to take them to court for any violations.

BTW, do everything CMRRR. You might even do a restricted delivery with the hospital admin to make sure it gets into his/her hands.

 

Hi June,

Welcome to the board.

First, Ronda is right on. You're entitled to receive notice that you owe money. And must be sent to your last known address. Start there.


If worse gets to worse; I suspect there was no agreement as to the exact amount which would be charged prior to the delivery of services.

In cases like this it is automatically presumed that both parties agree as follows;

• 1) The recipient will pay "reasonable" charges, and;
  2) The provider will charge no more than that which
  is reasonable.

When there is a disagreement it is the providers burden to PROVE that ALL charges were/are "reasonable", and were in fact delivered as billed.

Your argument then ought not be that you owe them nothing but rather, the amount they're attempting to collect is WAY high.


They knew, if they didn't co-operate we'd be talking a class action medical malpractice case, in FD court, in demand of a jury trial. Long story short they folded fast.


Send me an email so I can reply, and I'll send you a PDF which contains a wealth of information about the "paper work nightmare" you can unleash on this poor unsuspecting hospital.

In the meantime, follow Ronda. Start with DV.



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All that said, hospitals have provision for people who are low income. In many cases their program will pay the entire bill.

Now's the time to do your homework and see what kind of programs they do have with an eye toward getting them to recast the account and paid through the program.

Doing it now while you're unemployed may yield a nice result.



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There ya go, happy studyin.



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Some programs, like Medicaid, will pick up hospital bills retroactively. (Pay for old medical bills you incurred prior to applying for the program) Programs differ state to state as do income qualifications. You might want to check into it if your income isn't too high.

Good luck
3 day