A patient explains his trip to the ER and the $23,000 in charges he incurred for his two hour trip. The ER staff couldn’t find anything medically wrong, attributed his symptoms to anxiety and stress with no clear diagnosis, and told him to schedule a visit with his primary care physician. While Medxoom cannot help prevent egregious charges, we can help provide patients and employers with transparency on pricing to save money with our proprietary technology. While some instances like ER visits are to sudden to avoid, in most cases, there’s ample time to know how much your hospital visit is going to cost before visiting and compare the wildly variable pricing to assure you lower your out-of-pocket as a consumer and overall healthcare expenses as an employer.
From BenefitsPRO:
“I then opened the envelope from the insurance company. It was the explanation of benefits (EOB). At the bottom of the page, the same patient responsibility of $1,350 was displayed. This document, however, did provide a list of the services rendered at the ER. And more importantly, it included the amount that the ER billed my insurance company for the two-hour visit: $23,000! I was in shock and couldn’t fathom how my two-hour stint would warrant $23,000 worth of charges.
I immediately called the ER and requested an itemized invoice of the various items sent to the insurance company. After another two weeks, I received the itemized list of charges, seven in total. The ER room was $6,200. The CT scan was $8,600. And remember the four baby aspirin? $20. Yep, $5 per pill. Those were not the only charges, just the most egregious.”
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