My son got kicked in the face by our horse. I took him to the emergency room at Loudoun Hospital. I will never go there again. I have gone several times and they are always understaffed. They don't have a plastic surgeon in the hospital so they said that either I could wait for the doctor to come or I could go to his office. I thought that by going to his office it would save the insurance company money. I am all for saving them money as then all of our premiums can go down.
Well, I drive my son to his office. I hand the insurance card to the secretary and she gave me a strange look, but she took it. I filled out the forms and everything went fine. We never spoke about the insurance and being that I wasn't in my mind having an emergency on my hands I didn't think anything of it. Dr. Hess was a very professional doctor, seemingly great at what he does. I came back about a week or two later to take out the stitches confirming my insurance information.
Boy was I shocked when I got a $5000 bill from my insurance company saying that the charges were denied because Dr. Hess is not a provider on my insurance and his very high prices are why. The insurance company gave me $800 which is the 80% of the bill that they pay. $1000 was the allowable amount for stitches at the doctors office. I promptly sent them the $1000 and explained the situation to them.
They insisted on getting the entire amount saying that I should know that the bill is the patients responsibility. I said yes, but the doctors office also has a responsibity. They know what insurance companies they work with and which they don't. And since it is their money they should take responsibility. My husband is a doctor and if his secretary stupidly accepted a patient knowing that they do not accept the insurance then that would be my husbands loss because it is a billing error on his end. And especially with a patient in an emergency situation such as myself.
His collections had me send in a letter explaining the situation, which I did twice. They later claimed that they never received a letter from me, and after that even had the audacity to claim that they had never received any money for me either. They eventually dropped the extremely overpriced price for one of the nerve blocks.
This month my husband went ahead and paid $3000 which included interest and lawyer fees because they were taking me to court this month and I am in Egypt so can't get there. I feel very, very cheated. If a doctor does not accept an insurance they should not mislead a patient into believing that they do. I think there needs to be a new law regarding this. It should be 100% the doctor offices responsibility to make sure that they will be able to collect funds or let the patient know that they will have to pay out of pocket. I had many, many options and did not need to see this doctor.
Obviously had I known that they do not accept my insurance then I would have gone elsewhere. I could not undertand the look the secretary gave me when I gave her my insurance card until after I got the bill. I feel intentionally deceived and wonder how many other people this doctor has done this to. I have twelve children and that money would have really helped to pay for college.
