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I'm also really hopeful for this. A couple years ago I had a potentially serious injury and the local urgent care clinic said I needed a trauma center. The me
by mightybyte 4y ago
I'm also really hopeful for this. A couple years ago I had a potentially serious injury and the local urgent care clinic said I needed a trauma center. The message got lost in translation and I ended up at a Northwell Health hospital that did not have a trauma center. First they ignored the documents that I gave them and let me get past their triage so they could bill be and then told me that I needed a trauma center. After signing a refusal of care form and paying something like $200 to get out after getting zero care, I went to the nearest hospital with a trauma center where I was very quickly received by a full trauma team, got a CT scan, and determined that my condition was not serious.
I got a bill from the trauma center hospital for something like $500. Based on what I've been conditioned to expect from the U.S. health care system that seemed pretty reasonable. Then I got a bill from Northwell Health where I recieved no care for more than $800! Around that same time the NY Times came out with a piece about Northwell overcharging (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/upshot/covid-test-fees-lenox-hill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/upshot/covid-test-fees-le...). It took me months of badgering both my insurance company and Northwell to stop sending me payment delinquency notices.
Now, more than a year and a half later, they started sending me bills for that $800 again! So I'm very excited to see this kind of open source approach at this problem.
- tryptophan 4y agoThis is why you don't go to urgent care clinics. Half the time they don't even have doctors there, just NPs with online degrees.
- OrvalWintermute 4y agoIt sounds like you inprocessed at Northwell Health, went through billing, saw a Nurse/PA/NP, got vitals taken, met with an ER Doc, and received a confirmatory diagnosis, and the ER doc spent the time to read your documentation. For a hospital, your care is not merely the interventional aspect of medicine, but also the vitals, diagnosis, charting, and time spent on reading your documentation by a medical professional with > 20,000 hours experience & training.
- mightybyte 4y agoThey had a full report from the urgent care clinic including x-ray and blood test results. They added precisely zero value. It was a completely inexcusable failure of triage, solely to extract money. I paid the $200 or so on-site, and even that is not defensible IMO.
- amluto 4y agoIf I take my car to a shop, the shop contemplates my car, and concludes that they can’t help me on that visit (because they’re the wrong shop, they have the wrong part, etc), the usually charge me $0. Maybe $15. I have never in my life experienced an ER doing anything competent that remotely resembles reading documentation as part of triage. Why on Earth should they get paid more than a tiny nominal fee for the use of the waiting room and a bit of time spent by the triage staff?
- secabeen 4y agoMy understanding is that this is because the car repair market is heavily regulated, estimates are required for all repairs, and payment is based on a standard number of hours for each job, not actual time taken. The cost of estimates is already wrapped into the cost of the completed repairs, and estimates are required before work is done, so few places charge for declined estimates. https://www.bar.ca.gov/pdf/writeitright.pdf https://www.bar.ca.gov/pdf/writeitright.pdf
- dboreham 4y agoI think it's because car repair shops can't get away with being a total dick.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoExactly. "Terell's cousin is handy and while he's not the greatest he can probably get 'r done for more time and frustration but a lot less overall expense" is the nuclear option that caps how big a bag of dicks a shop can be. Barrier to entry is low and they don't have an AMA cartel lobbying the government to protect them which helps a lot too.