Urgent Care of Westchester

Review: I received a first bill for services 1 year after the services were rendered. Office visit was on 8/**/2012 and insurance paid on 9/*/2012. The statement was not issued until 8[redacted]2013. I called the billing manager ([redacted]) who informed me that she discovered that the outsourced company responsible for sending out their bills had not been performing their duties as expected. As a result, she understood that I had not received any previous notice of the payment due. Nevertheless, she now wants me to pay the amount not covered by my insurance. The company's computer problems are not the responsibility of the consumer. The company is responsible for sending out bills in a timely fashion. The consumer cannot be expected to pay unexpected bills a year after receiving a service. Stores and contractors would never get away with this, so why should health care be exempt?Desired Settlement: The bill should be waived.

Business

Response:

We are in receipt of the letter from Ms. [redacted] from Revdex.com. As stated by Ms. [redacted] she was seen at our facility on 8/**/2012 and her insurance paid part of the billed amount on 9/**/2012. Her insurance company at the time of sending the payment to us simultaneously sent an Explanation Of Benfits (EOB) statement to her notifying of her responsibility for the portion of bill ($45.21). This is required by law.A patient upon receiving that statement should pay the medical office the balanced owed.Ms. [redacted] was seen at the office again on 5/**/2013 and could have paid her balance at that point. An additional statement from the doctor's office only serves as an reminder to the patient about their financial responsibility.

Our billing company and billing software services are outsourced and the billing manager Ms [redacted] stated in her complaint, [redacted], is an employee of the billing company. When this matter was brought to our attention by Ms. [redacted]'s letter we immediately contacted our billing service vendors to look into it and are waiting for an explanation.

Unlike other retail stores and contractors we are a community based professional organization and work with our patient's needs and want to help them. The only way we can lawfully write off this amount is if Ms. [redacted] writes us a letter citing financial inability to pay this amount. We look forward to hearing back from Ms. [redacted] so we can resolve this matter expeditiously.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID# [redacted], and have determined that my complaint has NOT been resolved because:

[The business repeated their previous response. I do not accept it because they never sent out a bill for the amount due after the insurance was paid. It is customary practice to send out an invoice with an account number and an address to send the payment to. It is true that I visited the business a second time several months later. At that time, I was not reminded of the amount due and in fact, paid my bill IN FULL at the time of the visit. This was clearly an oversight by the billing department and since it was not brought to my attention for over one year from the date of service provision, it is not my responsibility.

In order for the Revdex.com to appropriately process your response, you MUST answer the question above.

Sincerely,