West County Radiology Group Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]
I am rejecting this response because:
Thank you for your kind and thorough response.  Everything stated makes complete sense.  With that said, we continue to circle back to me "asking the correct question" to a person who gave me an answer they "were not permitted" to give.  Certainly they know they don't have that type of authority and I should have been directed to your patient billing number provided in your response.  Unfortunately for the me, the entire process "appears" to be a [redacted] Hospital operation.  Not a [redacted]/West County Radiology.  At no time, even after asking about billing,  was I given alternate billing numbers to see if they were even in network let alone who was doing the billing.My point is this, you have identified that I asked all of the right questions to the people that were "made available" to me to ask questions of.  If the person that responded to the questions didn't have the authority to answer, she should have directed me to the people that can.The onus of providing proper information or direction to proper information when asked.  Lack of knowledge or lack of authority does not put the onus on the patient.I feel that [redacted] should compensate West County Radiology for this mistake. Had I been made aware, I had the option to shop other avenues for radiology and readings.   
Sincerely,
[redacted]

Mr. [redacted],I'm sorry you were surprised by your bill for interpreting your procedure. Unfortunately, the employee from the hospital who responded to you regarding having no further expenses did not have the knowledge or authority to make that response. I understand that medical billing is a very...

difficult process to understand, especially when you have a radiology procedure because it is very likely you never saw the physician face-to-face. West County Radiology does not have the authority to do any training in that regard with hospital personnel. You are very astute to understand that you might have been subject to a bill from a third party professional. Most patients don't understand that part of the process. I understand you asked the correct questions, but you did not ask the questions of the correct individuals. The patient billing department at [redacted] would have told you that they only bill for the technical portion of performing the procedure and that the interpretation and report to your physician is done by the independently contracted radiology group. We cannot give our fee schedule information to the hospital for them to be able to see the additional charges for a number of reasons, one of them being that your insurance company prohibits us from sharing that information with other medical professionals who may be able to use it to negotiate their own contracts. In the future, if you are scheduled for a radiology procedure you can call our office directly at [redacted] and we will give you the rate that you would be charged if you still had deductible. We do not collect any payments prior to processing insurance, so there is no way for us to tell if charges from other facilities might use up your deductible prior to us processing your charges and if that would have been the case, it is possible that you would not have owed anything out of pocket. At this time I would like to request that you pay your bill for the services performed by our physician. I hope that you are doing well and applaud your proactive inquiry regarding the cost of your treatment. Thank you so much. I hope that I have been able to clear up the misunderstanding you had regarding this matter.