PAML

Review: I have a complaint against PACLAB regarding a collection issue through Merchants Credit Association. The lab has forwarded my information for collection purposes and I am now being sued from Merchants Credit for $96 dollars. The lab had not sent any official notification of possible law suits and did not attempt to officially collect the debt. I find this treatment of a medical bill incredibly unjust and wish others to be aware of this hospital and the manner they treat their patients.Desired Settlement: I want to settle this debt outside of court.

Business

Response:

We located a date of service of 4-11-2014 for Mr. [redacted] for $96.00. No insurance information was received with the order we recieved from his provider so we used the most recent information we had on him which was with Aetna. Aetna denied the claim in May 2014 and patient statements were sent to the same address provided by Mr. [redacted] in his complaint on 6-14-2014, 7-9-2014, 8-5-2014 and a final notice on 8-30-2014. None of those statements were returned as undeliverable and no calls were recived in our billing customer service department during that time and also not after the account was turned over to the collection agency. Once the account is turned over to the collection agency the debt is no longer with us but with the collection agency. As the billing service for PACLAB members, PAML prides itself on working with all patients and payers to successfully resolve laboratory charges according to standard billing rules and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If Mr. [redacted] had responded at any time during the period over which he received 4 separate statements this could have been successfully resolved prior to the involvement of the collectionn agency.

Review: In September of 2014 my daughter [redacted] saw a doctor at Evergreen Hospital in Woodinville, WA. Subsequent lab work was done at PACLAB (date of service: 09/10/2014). Amazingly, the doctor, the insurance company, and PACLAB did not manage to sort out the cost for this (in my layman's opinion pretty standard) procedure that involved blood work and a urine test. I have one of the (supposedly) best health plans in the country through my employer Microsoft. Nevertheless, PACLAB managed to send me bills after bills in the amount of $1,728, threatening we with collections if I would not pay. I had not appreciated being treated this way. And I had to spend a considerable amount of time to handle communications between the hospital, the insurance, and PACLAB, trying to sort this out. Even after finally, I got an Explanations of Benefits (EOB) from the insurer that indeed confirmed that I need not pay this amount of $1,728 out of my pocket, PACLAB after almost 6 month of silence still would not relent: they sent me another invoice in the amount of $18.60, again threatening with collections. I now feel that enough is enough!Desired Settlement: I demand this money back PLUS an appropriate amount compensating for my time trying to sort this out. It is needless to say that I will share this episode with my co-workers and, more importantly, will also file a complaint against the hospital and the insurance company for so mercilessly and relentlessly squeezing the last penny out of their health customers. For the over 1 year of uncertainty over these proceedings, as well as the considerable amount of time and effort that we had to invest in this matter to straighten it out, we ask (besides the above-mentioned adjustment cost of $18.60 which in my opinion is utterly unjustified in view of the EOB) for a total amount of $200 to be reimbursed to me and my wife.

Business

Response:

In investigting this situation I learned that initially the patient's insurance carrier - Premera - did not proceess the claim completely but rather asked for chart notes from the ordering provider's office to substantiate/clarify the test orders. After we were able to obtain those chart notes we submitted them to Premera as directed. After they had completed their processing they sent a new EOB to us which stated that the patient was responsible for only $18.60 of the initial claim which had been for a total of $1728. We had accepted - per our contract with Premera - the contractual allowance of $858.40 for all testing that date of service.A payment of $50.00 was made by the patient's parents on 6/19/2015 which exceeded the final amount due according to the EOB received by the lab from Premera.Actions taken:The $50.00 will be refunded by check to Mr. [redacted].The $18.60 balance due has been written off and so at this time there is no balance due for this account. We apologize for the length of time it took the iinsurance company and the lab to resolve this claim.We are unable to reimburse for time spent in resolving this claim.

Consumer

Response:

[To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received, your complaint will be closed Administratively Resolved]

Revdex.com,

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted] and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

While I appreciate that the business is going to refund me my overpayment, I still am dissatisfied (for lack of a stronger word) with the business' response and the fact that I was charged for am amount that exceeded the EOB assessed amount. Also, it should be noted that the business in the meantime went ahead and marked my account as delinquent! I have to assume that this is a retaliatory action taken against me as a result of my Revdex.com complaint as I received a letter stating this in the mail yesterday, causing me additional frustration with this business that clearly is trying to squeeze as much money from me as they can, while doing as much damage to me as they can get away with. I wish to escalate this with Revdex.com, and now demand that the business produces proof that not only a) am I in good standing regarding my account, b) but furthermore produce in writing THAT I DID NOTHING WRONG in this entire unfortunate affair, and c) provide proof that the fact that they marked my account as delinquent has no consequence to my credit score. If any of these demands are not satisfied, I am determined to escalate this matter further also with the HR department of my employer (Microsoft), and the health professionals me and my family are seeing to make sure to inform them about these very questionable business practices.

Regards,

Business

Response:

I am sorry that Mr. [redacted] does not accept our response. Let me reiterate what I stated in my initial response which I believe provides the documentation that he is demanding now:1. The reasaon why the initial amount due was higher than the eventual EOB that was recieved from Premera is that Premera instructed us to bill that initial amount to the guarantor. They then reprocessed the claim based on the chart notes that we were required to submit from the ordering provider which resulted in a lower patient responsibility.2. Our standard process is to send 4 billing statements over a 4 month period of time with the final statement marked "delinquent" whihc simply indicates it is "past due". In the case of the account there were a total of 13 billing statements sent since the date of service of 9/10/2014.3. The process that is used to send the "delinguent" letter is totally automated based on length of time the bill was outstanding and so there is no way that this automated process could be aware of this Revdex.com complaint. In addiiton, I am not in the billing department and so have no connection to this automated process. To make an allegation of retaliation is unwarranted.4. This account is now resolved entirely and there has never been an allegation of wrong doing on the part of the guarantor, Mr. [redacted].5. There could be no impact to Mr. [redacted]'s credit score as we do not report anything to any credit bureau unless we turn an account over to an outside collection agency which we did not do with this account. Mr. [redacted] can confirm that himself with the credit agencies.We consider this complaint successfully resolved.

Review: I initially contacted PacLab with my insurance information. I am disabled from a severe injury and was on DSHS at the time. They never filed the information, so I again contacted them, shoortly after that (within a week) I received a notice that my bill was being sent to collection. I contacted the collection company to set up payment as I was getting no response from PacLab, no return calls and a different person every time I called with no apparent account history or notes!When I spoke with the women at the collection agency and told her what had transpired, she said not to send the payment at this time, she would follow up on the matter. I have never heard back from her or anyone at Chapman Financial Services. Now I have received another collection letter, like the first one. I have never intended to not pay my bills, even though this should have been covered by insurance. I have been trying to crawl out of a hole as it is with this injury (which occurred on the job, an assault, but was covered up by my former employer), so am basically feeling destroyed by circumstances I can not control due to a lack of other's integrity and/or competency. I do not want this on my credit report and it is. Thank you for your time and consideration.Desired Settlement: I will pay the outstanding balance, I do not receive much in Social Security benefits but will make an effort to pay the balance in full. What I do want, is this removed from my credit record. I made several attempts to contact PacLab and settle this, and then contacted to pay the bill and told to wait. This is bad bad customer service, and if I had a choice, I would prefer never to use PacLab's services again.

Business

Response:

Patient had testing performed on 04.05.2013. We keep very details records of all interactions with a patient and/or payer. She called on 05.28.13 and

06.10.13 and said she was applying for DSHS. She was advised on the 06.10 call

to contact her case worker to see if they would go retroactive to include this date

of service. Provider One Web site for

DSHS indicated that she was covered from

04.11.13 through 04.30.2013. I just checked today and she is still not covered

for the 04.04.date of service. Patient received a final notice telling her

account was going to collection on 06.23.13. Billing staff was working the pending accounts for collections and an attempt was made to submit the claim

under Provider One # [redacted] just in case her file got updated on 07.31. Up

front electronic eligibility came back as not

covered on date of service so it was forced to go to collections at the

end of August. Patient made another call

on 08.26.13 and was told claim denied and she could make payments. She said she

lives on Social Security, has no money, only gets paid once a month. We advised

her to make a small payment. There has been no contact from the patient

since that call. We did contact Chapman Collection Services on 12.3.2013. Their records show that on 10.07 the patient spoke with Chapman to inform

them she was covered by DSHS insurance, She was told to not pay until they

could verify eligibility. Chapman subsequently made numerous follow up calls to the home

with no pick up or no follow up call from the patient to let her know that she was not

covered on the DOS of 05.05.2013. On 11.21 Chapman and

the patient spoke again. She insisted that she was covered and would not let

them tell her she was not covered. She hung up on the Chapman representative. PAML prides itself on working with all patients and payers to successfully resolve laboratory charges according to standard billing rules and the Fair Credit Reporting Act which we have done in this case.

Review: I use my bill pay to send PAML a check when I receive my statements. My patient number is on ALL the checks, yet somehow, I receive past due notices EVERY month from PAML. One time I was told that I placed the wrong patient number on my check, and that they credited another persons account. Yet, this was not true. The person inputing it into accounts receivable typed in the wrong patient number and I had to email copies of the cashed check to prove it.

For example, payment for $12.34 was sent on 12/12/13. However, as of 12/27/13 (15 days later…) it had not posted to my bank account (it was not cashed) and I was sent another late notice. On 12/31/13 (19 days after the check had been sent via bill pay) it finally posted. My account SHOULD be up to date now.

Today, I received a statement from from Chapman Financial, a collection agency, asking me to pay. This is affecting my credit. This is NOT my fault. I sent an email to them regarding this problem in detail on 1/1/13. They said they were "forwarding it on", but I was never contacted by anyone. This is really bad customer service and a problem with their billing practices and I should not be penalized for it.Desired Settlement: I want my account to be updated and ANY reporting to a collection agency COMPLETELY reversed and to have that IN WRITING that this will not be reported to the credit agencies. I also want an explanation of why this keeps happening.

Business

Response:

I apologize for the delay in responding to this complaint which we received on 1/9/2014. We had already received an email from [redacted] on 1/1/2014 which had actually gone into an email queue unrelated to our billing department so there was a delay in getting it to our billing customer service department. On the same day we received this complaint I started our investigation and learned that the patient had called into the billing department and requested a return call. We decided that making that return call would be our first step to resolve this complaint and we typically have the customer service supervisor make that type of call. Unfortunately she was then out sick and this call did not happen until 1/24/2014. We apologized to [redacted] at that time for the accounting error on her May payment and the delay in posting her payment in December.

The supervisor who spoke to [redacted] gave her the direct phone line to her desk in case there were any further billing issues.

The letter that [redacted]'s stated she received from Chapman Financial was actually a "pre-collect letter" that we routinely send after the second statement goes out on an unpaid bill just to make patients aware of any outstanding balances. Nothing has been sent to them for collection purposes and so there has been no impact to her credit rating . As of 1/10/2014 all of her past accounts after insurance had been paid in full although there were currently 3 open accounts pending insurance processing on that date. I am not aware of any problems with these accounts at this time.

I encourage [redacted] to work directly with the supervisor who spoke with her on the phone if she should have any other questions or concerns about her billing statements.

Consumer

Response:

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business' response. If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]

Revdex.com,

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. However the response took a long time and I was not given a better answer to why this is happening besides "it was the holidays and people were sick". I was not reassured that I could continue to use billpay and be free of problems. So, I am satisfied that their slowness/issues with accounts receivable doesn't affect my credit, but I will be careful to follow up with them after a payment. As I told the supervisor who called me, electronic payments are how my generation pays for things. We don't write checks or return mail with credit card information on it. They need to improve their process.

Regards,

Do not ever ever go here for any reason. They make mistakes at every turn. Simple things like not giving you the right number of sample containers or giving you the wrong type of sample containers. Then they don't figure out their mistake for about 2 weeks and try to charge you for both visits because of mistakes they made. I needed routine testing done, it took PAML 6 visits over a 4 month span to do what should have been done in 1 day. The bills then took about 8 months to roll in and they tried to double bill me twice.