Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2005. Mattie was two and a half years old and I most likely snapped this photo because of the impish smile on Mattie's face. Mattie was the kind of child who followed me around our home. If I left a room, sure enough minutes later Mattie would be right behind me. Case in point, that day I went into the kitchen and Mattie wanted to get up on the counter to get a closer look at what I was doing.
Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.
- Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 26,278,706
- Number of people who died from the virus: 442,399
I find it absolutely amazing the amount of documentation, emails, phone calls and insurance correspondence that have arisen due to my dad's hospitalizations in May and June of 2020. The latest fiasco that my mom and I are dealing with is a letter sent to us from my dad's health insurer. Apparently one of his doctor's submitted a claim for a visit. But what troubles us is the doctor implies my dad was being treated because he was in an accident.
When I looked at the letter, I did not recognize the doctor's name. Since I know most of my dad's doctors, my radar went off. So I did a google search on this doctor's name. Turns out this doctor oversees the wound care people who visit my dad weekly. Weekly since June! It will be delightful when my dad's pressure sore fully heals, so we can dispense with this team.
In any case, this morning, I contacted my dad's home health agency. The agency who connected us with the wound care specialist company. The agency is equally disturbed by the letter I emailed to them. As we all know my dad was never in an accident, and what I find particularly fascinating is my dad never actually saw the doctor billing for the visit. Of course I gather that the doctor is overseeing the wound care specialist who made the actual in home assessment and visit. The home health agency has asked me to give them a day to figure out what's going on. But my patience is limited and I would like to contact the health insurer and let them know that my dad was never in an accident and therefore, to me this is a fraudulent medical claim. I say this because the letter makes it clear that the health insurer will not pay for this visit, as it is a third party responsibility. Got to love it.
I truly wonder how many people just pay off medical bills because they just can't handle the bureaucracy and the voluminous amount of correspondence by mail? I did a little digging and found..........
- As many as 80 percent of hospital bills contain errors. No wonder, since there are nearly 70,000 diagnosis codes and over 71,000 procedure codes to sift through.
- The wrong code can lead to an overcharge of hundreds — or thousands — of dollars. A National Academy of Medicine report estimates about $210 billion is spent on unneeded or overpriced treatments.
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