Anyone who has checked into a hospital knows that once you check out, you'll be confronted with a staggeringly expensive, dizzyingly confusing bill. But what is not common knowledge is that many of these bills contain errors that can cost consumers and their insurers thousands of dollars.
How big and how common are the errors? The answer depends on whom you ask. Some say the vast majority of bills have errors, including both overcharges and undercharges to the consumer, but the value of the mistakes are relatively modest at about $100 each.
Others maintain that fewer bills have errors, but those that do can be doozies. One study concentrated only on high-rate and high-risk bills--those totaling at least $10,000 and containing many lab and pharmacy charges, among other things--and found errors averaging $1,300 to $1,500. But the firm that conducted the study, Atlanta-based Equifax, said most bills were not studied because they were unlikely to contain errors of consequence.
Today, consumers are finding themselves paying for an increasing share of their medical costs and health-care providers are becoming more aggressive about bill collection, so these mistakes may prove more unsettling to individuals than ever before. As a result, consultants and other industry experts frequently encourage consumers to scrutinize their hospital bills for mistakes.
The scrutiny isn't easy. Even a short stay in the hospital can result in a multipage bill. Hospital bills also have a language all their own, so often you won't recognize even legitimate charges on first glance. Consumers can also be hampered because they don't remember exactly which procedures were done and which drugs were administered at particular times. After all, the person receiving the treatment was sick, sometimes unconscious.
Nevertheless, it might be worth the time and trouble to try.
Consider the case of a Chicago man who had a back injury. He was charged for four days of traction--a procedure where the body is immobilized to prevent jarring the spine. The cost amounted to about $1,600, said John Garner, president of Garner Consulting in Pasadena. The problem was, this patient was never put in traction. Assuming 80% insurance coverage, the patient's portion of the erroneous tab amounted to $320.
A maternity patient was charged for three nights in a semiprivate room and one night in the labor and delivery room when she was in the hospital for only three nights, Garner said. The overcharge amounted to about $400, or $320 for the insurer and $80 for the patient.
