Post mom continues.

The medical bills have been an ongoing adventure.  In frustration.  In amazement at the general incompetence of the phone PR person.  In the belief (be it ever so paranoid) that most health providing institutions are eager to hold onto money even if it is not theirs to hold on to.

I have created a special folder for these people.  A back note:  I have had to create a whole new folder system (I am generally not that organized) to make sure I am doing a almost reasonable job of keeping up.  It has meant juggling four different accounts from which to pay bills, depending on which account seems the most fluid at the time.

So, I discovered that at any one time, there was at least one (if not more) place of business that I was in conflict with over inaccurate billing.  There was the medical supply place that picked up all their equipment but somehow lost the documentation that they had done so, and so kept billing my mom/me for that equipment.  It took three months of repeated calling to said business before finally settling the issue.  Oh, and did I mention that they had also picked up some equipment belonging to a different supply company?  Piece of advice:  never deal with the managerial people on these kind of problems.  They will never actually get around to doing the groundwork that needs to happen.  After a month of trying to sort this error out, I finally obtained the phone number of the equipment storage people and called myself (hence discovering manager did not ever do this) and voila–problem solved.

Not the worst case, however.  One extended care facility (euphemism for nursing home) where my mother did rehab, failed to act competently on a couple of fronts.  The first, they did not do due diligence with tracking how many days my mother would have Medicare coverage for her stay.  A bill I expected to be $6,000 turned out to be $13,000 (I cannot make these things up).  After exhausting my mother’s annuity, the bill was paid and I got the wonderful final (supposedly) statement showing we owed $0.00.  Since then I have learned to never exhale when these statements come.  Exactly one month later, I received a statement from the same institution that reported me owing another $1,800 in charges (part of this billed to Medicare).  I might have taken this a little better if this statement had come by itself.  But no, they had to send a warning that this account would be sent to a bill collector if we did not pay it right away.  That rated a very upset call from me, where I reached voicemail and left a very detailed message conveying a description of this error and my desire it be corrected.  Please note that I have never used obscenity, raised my voice, or threatened any violent activity.  But it is always very obvious when I am angry and this element was evident in my message.  I received a call shortly thereafter from a very apologetic customer service person, quickly conveying to me this mistake was being immediately corrected and my mother owed nothing.

One would suppose the successful outcome in such matters would at least provide relief of my anxiety and state of fury at incompetence, but the sad fact is, this folder of mine, the one with paperwork from all the people I don’t like very much, has never been empty.  Still not empty.  This journey of medical care with my mother started almost a year ago, and appears to be continuing after her death.  During that time at least a half dozen entities have occupied this folder (it has a zip up binder all to itself) and sometimes the same company that I have removed at one point, has returned to the folder, often without much time in between.

The company that mistakenly added $1,800 worth of charges?  They may have forgiven me my mother’s portion (about $500) but I am left to wonder if they didn’t still proceed with submitting billing to Medicare for non-existent care.  I contemplate the value of speaking with Medicare about that.  Once I sort out revenge (I am still totally incensed about the nerve to include a collection notice with this obvious error) from actual civic concern about the abuse of our Medicare system, I probably will pursue this.  In reality, the timing will probably have nothing to do with figuring out my motivation, but more to do when I finally get a break from the rest of this chaos.

I really don’t like these people very much.