Friday, June 06, 2008

Aggravating

In January, (the 25th, to be precise) we took my son in to get his forehead sutured when he fell at school and needed stitches. We got a statement from Blue Cross telling us how much they paid for the services, but then never got a bill from Intermountain Health Care (IHC), the company that runs the urgent care. I actually did not notice this, because we get lots of medical bills for various things, and it never occurred to me that they had failed to bill me.

Fast forward to today. I got a call from IHC, complaining that I had an outstanding balance of $197. I told them I had never received a bill, and they replied that they had sent me a bill and two letters regarding the balance. I asked them to what address they sent the bills, and it turns out they sent the bills to our old address, where we have not lived for SIX YEARS. Um, hello!???? I asked Loren if they had asked him for his updated info when he took Calvin in, and he can't remember. So, either they got the new info and didn't enter it into the system, or they didn't even bother to take it down. ARRRGH! Fortunately, I was able to simply give the woman my credit card number and pay the bill, and they had not sent it to collections yet, so it won't be a problem. Whew. But it's VERY aggravating, all the same.

1 comment:

Hunca Munca said...

IHC has a problem updating their patient demographic information. We have had to update our address with them several times (at different offices, but all using IHC health care). It IS aggravating. For an organization with such great clinical information systems, they seem to be missing a link here. Glad they didn't insist on billing you late fees.