Inefficiency in Government
Certainly this topic didn't surprise you, did it?
I work at a hospital and part of my Interim Director responsibilities is to be in charge of the areas involving cash, billing and our coder in the Patient Financial Services area.
One of the unfortunate things that we bill are for Sexual Assault Examinations. These are billed to the state's Official of the Attorney General (OAG). We do not bill the patient. (Yes, I know what they do in Alaska.)
When I came to the facility and an employee was just assigned this "insurance" or "payor", there were numbers of accounts that hadn't been followed up on timely to ask the payment source on why they hadn't paid the claim.
So in August, knowing that we had likely missed the timely filing deadline for payment, I instructed the biller to pull together all of the appropriate information nonetheless and submit it.
We just found out today - Wednesday, March 4 (*that* delay is normal) - that the claims had indeed been denied as we thought that they might be. (Yes, the hospital has to eat those dollars - and no, hospitals aren't making money hand over first.)
Our facility is less than three (3) miles from the State Capitol.
There were five (5) claims that had been denied.
We received 10 envelopes. Five of them were sent regular mail - approximately .59 - with a copy of a standard, signed form letter, the original claim and a copy of the policy with the offending portion highlighted.
The other five were sent certified mail. These were the originals (well, the letter was the original)! The cost on each one? $5.49!
They just spent $30 of the taxpayer's money when they could have called us and we would have gone and picked them up.
And you wonder why we have some of the problems that we do?
I work at a hospital and part of my Interim Director responsibilities is to be in charge of the areas involving cash, billing and our coder in the Patient Financial Services area.
One of the unfortunate things that we bill are for Sexual Assault Examinations. These are billed to the state's Official of the Attorney General (OAG). We do not bill the patient. (Yes, I know what they do in Alaska.)
When I came to the facility and an employee was just assigned this "insurance" or "payor", there were numbers of accounts that hadn't been followed up on timely to ask the payment source on why they hadn't paid the claim.
So in August, knowing that we had likely missed the timely filing deadline for payment, I instructed the biller to pull together all of the appropriate information nonetheless and submit it.
We just found out today - Wednesday, March 4 (*that* delay is normal) - that the claims had indeed been denied as we thought that they might be. (Yes, the hospital has to eat those dollars - and no, hospitals aren't making money hand over first.)
Our facility is less than three (3) miles from the State Capitol.
There were five (5) claims that had been denied.
We received 10 envelopes. Five of them were sent regular mail - approximately .59 - with a copy of a standard, signed form letter, the original claim and a copy of the policy with the offending portion highlighted.
The other five were sent certified mail. These were the originals (well, the letter was the original)! The cost on each one? $5.49!
They just spent $30 of the taxpayer's money when they could have called us and we would have gone and picked them up.
And you wonder why we have some of the problems that we do?
posted by WalkSports.com | 4:03 PM
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