The patient was unable to produce health benefit information to cover their services and yet expected services without making payment. Can you walk into the grocery store and leave with food without paying? When we deliver services, we require that payment must be made. The patient gave us his financial information, it was used to pay for his services, visits, etc. We unfortunately failed to end the payment plan timely, for that we are sorry. In this mistake, our accounting was still accurate, his account showed a credit and that credit was refunded. We have reflected on this situation as discussion point to improve our processes.
Hopefully this customer will find a piece of humanity to understand that people make mistakes, we corrected ours and are hopefully better for it. We’re sorry for any discomfort or troubles it has caused him.
__________________________
Justin *. P[redacted], JD MBA CMPE
Chief Executive Officer
From: Justin P[redacted] Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 12:17 PMTo: complaints <[email protected]>Subject: Response to [redacted]
We really strive to give patients a great experience, which also includes a good financial experience. Clearly, we did not do this in this case and are...
extremely sorry for this.
We try to make our services affordable for everyone, which includes setting up payment plans for convenience. This financing option is for the benefit of patients but is not without some challenges for us in its administration. It is true that this patient up on a payment plan and it is true that the payments ran past the payment amount of the original intention of the payment plan. For this, we are incredibly sorry. This is a manual process for us and we missed this patient’s account.
The patient did use more services at our clinic that created a balance on their account. In adjudicating this balance, the money that was overpaid as part of the payment plan for the initial procedure was applied, to avoid more transactions than necessary and really for the convenience for the patient. The alternative would have been issuing a refund with a bill for immediate payment, not a typical business practice. Credits are generally applied to an account prior to a bill.
It sounds like this patient did not have a good experience in getting in contact with senior management. This is our fault and will strive to document these requests and follow through.
This patient’s speculation that we regularly “steal” from our customers is very misplaced. We offered this service to this patient as a convenience and clearly made a mistake, but clearly this option of paying for a procedure without interest and automatically is not valuable to them. It’s possible we should reconsider this service to our customers for their convenience and only offer our services with full and immediate payment. We are successfully addressing the billing issues that are associated with operating a business in the health care industry, which is very complicated and difficult to understand for patients. We do not “steal” from patients.
This patient was refunded the difference, which was issued before this complaint was filed.
__________________________
Justin ** P[redacted] JD MBA CMPE
Chief Executive Officer
Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
I never requested a payment plan. It was put in place by a worker up front who schedules appointments and refused to accept that my insurance was covering the possible pending procedure. The procedure never took place and I was billed for services never rendered over a 6 month period. The only reason the auto billing stopped was because my wife caught it and asked questions since we never received a bill from restore pdx. Taking money from my checking account is unacceptable. The fact that the business manager couldn't explain it either make it hard to believe you seriously know what is happening to other patients accounts.Sincerely,[redacted]
The patient was unable to produce health benefit information to cover their services and yet expected services without making payment. Can you walk into the grocery store and leave with food without paying? When we deliver services, we require that payment must be made. The patient gave us his financial information, it was used to pay for his services, visits, etc. We unfortunately failed to end the payment plan timely, for that we are sorry. In this mistake, our accounting was still accurate, his account showed a credit and that credit was refunded. We have reflected on this situation as discussion point to improve our processes.
Hopefully this customer will find a piece of humanity to understand that people make mistakes, we corrected ours and are hopefully better for it. We’re sorry for any discomfort or troubles it has caused him.
__________________________
Justin *. P[redacted], JD MBA CMPE
Chief Executive Officer
From: Justin P[redacted] Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 12:17 PMTo: complaints <[email protected]>Subject: Response to [redacted]
We really strive to give patients a great experience, which also includes a good financial experience. Clearly, we did not do this in this case and are...
extremely sorry for this.
We try to make our services affordable for everyone, which includes setting up payment plans for convenience. This financing option is for the benefit of patients but is not without some challenges for us in its administration. It is true that this patient up on a payment plan and it is true that the payments ran past the payment amount of the original intention of the payment plan. For this, we are incredibly sorry. This is a manual process for us and we missed this patient’s account.
The patient did use more services at our clinic that created a balance on their account. In adjudicating this balance, the money that was overpaid as part of the payment plan for the initial procedure was applied, to avoid more transactions than necessary and really for the convenience for the patient. The alternative would have been issuing a refund with a bill for immediate payment, not a typical business practice. Credits are generally applied to an account prior to a bill.
It sounds like this patient did not have a good experience in getting in contact with senior management. This is our fault and will strive to document these requests and follow through.
This patient’s speculation that we regularly “steal” from our customers is very misplaced. We offered this service to this patient as a convenience and clearly made a mistake, but clearly this option of paying for a procedure without interest and automatically is not valuable to them. It’s possible we should reconsider this service to our customers for their convenience and only offer our services with full and immediate payment. We are successfully addressing the billing issues that are associated with operating a business in the health care industry, which is very complicated and difficult to understand for patients. We do not “steal” from patients.
This patient was refunded the difference, which was issued before this complaint was filed.
__________________________
Justin ** P[redacted] JD MBA CMPE
Chief Executive Officer
Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
I never requested a payment plan. It was put in place by a worker up front who schedules appointments and refused to accept that my insurance was covering the possible pending procedure. The procedure never took place and I was billed for services never rendered over a 6 month period. The only reason the auto billing stopped was because my wife caught it and asked questions since we never received a bill from restore pdx. Taking money from my checking account is unacceptable. The fact that the business manager couldn't explain it either make it hard to believe you seriously know what is happening to other patients accounts.Sincerely,[redacted]