Patients Get Billed for Medical Mistakes

Excellent story from MSNBC about hospital / medical errors and their follow up.

Cited are a number of cases where patients were the victims of errors -- surgery errors, wrong blood type transfusions, drug errors, even babies being discharged to the wrong mother -- and other "never events" as they are called by the National Quality Forum.

Not only do these patients suffer the insult or death that was caused by the error -- but then, in 40 states in the US -- they may also be billed for the extra work needed to care for them!

These questions are raised in anticipation of the changes to Medicare law coming up in October 08. Medicare has defined a dozen or so of these errors, including MRSA and other hospital acquired infections, it will no longer pay for. Further, the law states that hospitals may not bill the patients for them either.

I had my own experience with this phenomenon. When I was misdiagnosed in 2004, I / my insurance was billed for the wrong pathology results, and all the resulting tests, appointments, and other follow ups. The total was close to $10,000 -- and my insurance only covered a very small portion of that.

I battled the billing for each of the doctors and labs that I felt had unfairly billed me. In the case where the billing was fair, I paid it. For example, I did have a lump on my torso, and it did need to be surgically removed -- that billing was fair. I wrote the checks.

But for those doctors and labs that were wrong -- I made sure they zero-ed out my balance on their books. AND, I worked with my health insurance company to be sure there were no reimbursements. (Although, I can't tell you for sure that those reimbursements were not made.)

The MSNBC article is based on that point -- fairness. If you live in one of the 10 states where the law speaks to no post-error billing... you are lucky.

If not? And you are the victim of an error? Watch your bills closely.

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Have you been the victim of a medical error? Did you get billed for it? Will you share your experience in our Forum?

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