An open letter to Trident Medical Center

Dear Top Dog,

You’ve got a problem. As I’m sure you know, The Wife and I came to your hospital when it was time to deliver our babies. I’ll be upfront and tell you that you were not our first choice. But that’s where her doctors practice so that’s where we decided to go. Overall, I would say the doctors were great (to The Wife) and the nurses were great (to The Wife). Nobody seemed to care about me, but that’s neither here nor there. Bottom line is The Wife was happy with the care she received. So doctors and nurses are not the problem (at least in this case... I’m still a little bitter over the treatment I received, but this isn’t the time for that).

No, your problem is in your billing. You may remember our youngest child, Susie, was born this past October. It is now May. This latest bill was a “Final Notice”. On it, you included things like: Patient Name, Account Number, Discharged Date, Total Charges, Statement Date, Account Balance, Payment Due Date, and a nice little note that said (in part) “You recently failed to make the promised payment for this account. You are legally obligated to make full payment for the services that were provided. We fully intend to pursue all legal and appropriate means to collect this debt. We are writing to offer one final chance to resolve this matter. We must receive PAYMENT IN FULL within ten (10) days. Otherwise, your account will be referred to a collection agency and will be reported to a credit bureau without further notice. Please take immediate action to avoid any negative affect to your credit rating”.

As you might guess, my immediate thought was that I should call you and tell you to go f*** yourself and that I would pay whenever you got your s*** together. But I didn’t do that. There is still a chance I will, but I haven’t yet. No, I paid because The Wife wanted me to and it wasn’t a huge amount. However, I would like to respond line by line to what you sent me...

“You recently failed to make the promised payment for this account. (You failed to do your job and properly file with my insurance. You also failed to bill me in a timely manner. I know this one says “Final Notice” but I didn’t get the first notice until late March. What were you guys doing between October and March?) You are legally obligated to make full payment for the services that were provided. (This brings up a very good point... What service are you billing me for? You will notice above when I listed what was included on the bill that I at no point listed anything along the lines of “Services Provided”. NONE, ZERO, Nada (0) of the bills you sent me said WHAT they were for. The ONLY reason I’ve paid ANY of them is that God has blessed me with so much money that I felt it was ok for me to give some of it to you incompetent a-holes. That, and The Wife took valuable time out of her day to call and verify what the charges were for). We fully intend to pursue all legal and appropriate means to collect this debt. (While we’re talking about things we “fully intend” to do, I feel I must share with you that I fully intend to put my foot up someone’s a** at your hospital for the headache you have given me). We are writing to offer one final chance to resolve this matter. (I am posting this as your warning. I hope that either you read this blog or that someone who does read it passes this on to you). We must receive PAYMENT IN FULL within ten (10) days. (Bite me). Otherwise, your account will be referred to a collection agency and will be reported to a credit bureau without further notice. (After seeing how incompetent you are at collecting your own money, I can only imagine how bad you are at fixing credit that was damaged because you were stupid. That’s the other reason we paid. I’m guessing that’s also a reason so many people want Health Care Reform. And this is true. While most people might not have wanted what The President was pushing, a very large majority do want reform. They call it “health care reform” but really most people want “health care BILLING reform”). Please take immediate action to avoid any negative affect to your credit rating (You should take immediate action before I start telling EVERYONE to do their best to never ever ever ever step foot in your hospital if they can at all help it. In the end, The Wife will have to make the call on if we use you again when we have our next child, but I’m sure you can figure out what my vote is going to be)”.

Oh, and I understand that the people doing the billing and all of that aren’t actually in the hospital. I’m sure you will want to tell me that it is a third-party doing all of this and really it’s out of your hands. Well, it’s not out of your hands. That third-party isn’t doing this work for free. You have to pay them. So you can either get them to change or you can change who you use. It’s really pretty simple. And just an FYI... this isn’t the first time we’ve had problems with the billing at your hospital. It also happened when Mary Ruth was born. Don’t remember? Let me help you. We had to come back five straight days (Monday – Friday) for tests. We kept getting a bill for the Wednesday visit saying that our insurance had denied it. Odd, we thought, since they didn’t deny any of the others (all tests were the same). The Wife called the insurance company to find out why and they said they were never billed. She called you and you swore you billed them. You, of course, wouldn’t give us any information because (you said) of HIPAA laws. (BTW, HIPAA laws don’t apply when it’s the patient calling for the info, jacka**). This went on for a few weeks and then you started getting pissy with us (sound familiar?). So I had to step in and talk to whoever it was that does the billing for you (before The Wife said something to make that person cry). He/she/it (I don’t remember) wouldn’t give me any info (of course) so I compromised with him/her/it. I read our insurance info over the phone to the person. Wow... what do you know? THEY HAD BEEN BILLING THE WRONG F***ING INSURANCE THE WHOLE TIME FOR 1 F***ING DAY! At NO POINT did ANYONE there think, “Huh, this is weird... why would their insurance only deny one day? Maybe we should make sure we billed the correct insurance. Boy, I bet Mr. Horres would be ROYALLY PISSED if we sent him nasty letters about paying something when in the end some dumba** here was to blame”. That would have been the smart thing to think. But, hey, I was young and happy and (more importantly) didn’t have a blog... so I let it go. But now you are really starting to get on my bad side.

So, I hope this helps clear up some things that have been going on between us.

Good Day.