Lakeside Family Physicians

This was sent to Revdex.com Complaint Dept on 3/12/2020

To Whom it May Concern:This is our response to the complaint (#***) filed with the
Revdex.com with regards to a billing issue at Lakeside Family Physicians.Mr *** presented to our office on 6/26/2017 and received an
Annual Preventative Exam. Unfortunately, his Medicare insurance does not
cover Annual Physical/Preventative Exams. When he received a bill he was
confused about was and wasn’t covered. This was brought to my attention
on Aug 21 2018 (over 1 year later), there had been staffing turn over at this
time which could have been the reason for delays. I spoke with the
patient and explained in depth the services that Medicare will and will not
cover and the patient received a physical exam that day. He was aware
that this exam was a standard office visit and he would be coded as such.
During this visit the patient had blood drawn and orders were sent to Quest
Laboratories. Lakeside Family Physicians, does not charge for these labs,
we submit the lab test codes as well as the diagnosis codes associated with
that days visit. Mr *** references receiving collection notices and that
we did not use proper coding to bill Medicare; our office has not billed Mr
*** for the office visit on 8/21/2018 or his subsequent follow up visit on
10/5/2018 as his insurance has not yet processed either of these charges.
We have informed Mr *** of this and that he should contact Quest Labs and/or
the credit agency regarding outstanding patient balances as these were not sent
from our office. The only balance on Mr ***’s account is for $24 from a
blood draw on 3/11/2019 which Medicare denied. We still have over $400 for
services that Mr *** has received in our office and neither his insurance
(Medicare or BCBS) or himself have paid. It saddens me to think that he feels
we are only interested in money, when in fact we have to wait patiently for
insurance to process and pay, which as you can see from this history can take
over a year, and then the patient does not want to pay for services received.Complaint:The doctor at this facility is
good. However, the staff seems to be incompetent and/or severely understaffed.
Charges related to blood work-up should have been paid by Medicare, but the
staff seems unable or unwilling to use Medicare coding to get proper coverage.
This has been an ongoing issue since August 2018; I have been receiving notices
by a collection agency as a result. Further, I just recently received a charge
for their services that was also supposed to be covered by Medicare; this was
from March 2019. This is the first time I have seen this charge (1 year later).
The company says it will respond to portal questions in 2 days. It has been
months since my last question, with no response. Frankly, this company appears
to have no interest in actually doing work to get proper charging and other
communications completed, just the minimum required to get money.In Health,Jenifer
T*** M.A., Office ManagerLakeside
Family Physicians425.369.1342