Your doctor's practice has been purchased by a hospital group. A simple steroid injection might now include a facility fee. These types of billing surprises are just wrong. Some states are fighting this. Not sure if the charges would be the same with a traditional Medicare plan vs Medicare Advantage. Something else we may need to worry about before seeing a doctor.
Facility fee?? Get out your wallet!

 

It's nuts. I'm not going to comment too much because healthcare in this country gets my blood boiling. All I will say is we have been promised for decades that it will be improved upon and it has just gotten worse and worse.

 

I had a check up in November. It was my first doc visit since I went on Medicare. They should have billed the visit as a "Welcome to Medicare" vs a "Medicare Wellness" visit as wellness visits aren't authorized until you've been on Medicare for a while. Unless the doc's office is allowed to re-code and re-submit the bill, it appears they are getting a whole lot of nothing for that visit. The paperwork I received from Medicare says my balance is ZERO.

Years ago another doctor coded something incorrectly and the claim was denied. The practice wanted to split the bill 50/50 with me. I don't think so. I paid my co-pay, I know what exams I was allowed to have, and if they didn't code it properly, I wasn't paying.

You have to stay on your toes with this stuff, especially if you are in an HMO and you end up with some service that was not a network provider. Ran into that once when Rick had some surgery. I told them he had no control of what provider the doc ordered "durable medical equipment" from while he (Rick) was under anesthesia.

 

Lainey, for years I was going to the same nose guy. During an office visit he would frequently stuff a long tube up my nose for better visibility.

He retired go to new guy. besides an office visit now being $400 I also had a $895 otolaryngical exam surgical procedure, ( that the tube thing)
I also had an MRI on my head by another doctor and it noted significant sinus disease so we notified him that they were available so he dinged me another $400 for reviewing the MRI info.

He is now my former nose guy.

 

oh BTW I thought you were talking about the $30 facility fee when you go to a hotel that has a golf course available.
" yeah I'm not paying that. I'm here on business and the company doesn't cover that" he said on the way to his tee time.

 

Did your insurance company deny any of the charges? Or pay them a pittance? Rick's bill at the dermatologist every January and June is always interesting. Provider charges $, provider gets X. We pay the $198 medicare deductible and we're done with office co-pays. She's a slick businesswoman. She never submits the bills until the second quarter. I guess she knows many people have deductibles kick in in January so she must hope another provider is the one waiting for the payment, and allows time for someone else to invoice first.

The first time we ran into any resort fee was in VT. I was some pi$$ed about it as it's really just a way to hike the rate of the room. I think they discounted something but would not technically remove the fee.

 

I don't mean for this to become political, but Bernie Sanders had the right idea.

 

My knee doctor has 'facility' charges and I have not had any trouble with insurance paying........as of yet!

 

If I still worked, I guess I would add a facility fee, plus a computer fee, pen & pencil fee, and paper handling fee. Heaven help my client if they had to use the bathroom. Remember pay toilets?

 

Believe it or not, years ago when AT&T was still a monopoly and you called to place an order (for a new phone or a new service) you would be charged an "order writing fee". I once got so pissed off about this I told the clerk to put in the order without writing it up. Of course, that didn't work.

A few years ago banks started charging fees if you needed assistance from one of the "desk" people. If, for example, you went into the bank for help reconciling your checking account they could charge you for the help. I don't know if they still do this, but I do know that a lot of people were very upset with this.