(originally published March 30th, 2005)<\/p>\n
Earlier this evening I wrote my healthcare newsletter on the reasons for showing some compassion when people call up to talk about their hospital bills or physician bills. I stressed that, because healthcare is different than retail in that most people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come to us willingly, we need to try to understand the side of patients and their family members, especially when something critical may have occurred, when they call up and are upset about their hospital bill.<\/p>\n
Insurance companies have it all wrong. They think that because many people have insurance, and because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been given a book of their benefits, that they fully understand their coverages and how billing works. Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here to tell you, the initiated, what you already know; most of you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the process at all. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you how many times I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had to explain to people what deductible or co-pay means. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe how many times I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked to people and had to explain to them that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to get authorizations for some services from their primary physician, or what that even means.<\/p>\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my thoughts on this, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for those who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in healthcare, who need to call because of a billing issue:<\/p>\n
One, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay to be mad up front with the first person you talk to, because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not the ones who created the bill.<\/p>\n
Two, if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand how it all works, start off by asking questions rather than being accusatory. Even though many healthcare facilities try to train their staffs on how to talk to upset people on the phone, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re human also, and will be ready to defend themselves, even if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called for.<\/p>\n
Three, if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the answers, ask the question again, or explain which part of the explanation you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand; sometimes, professional people in any industry get so caught up in their own jargon and terminology that they forget that not everyone understands it.<\/p>\n
And four, if all else fails, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get mad, just ask to move up the line to the supervisor. And I mean the supervisor; jumping to the director doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always serve you because, in some cases, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work medical claims all the time, so they may not be able to fully satisfy your question, and jumping to the CEO level will just delay satisfaction because, trust me, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how the process works either.<\/p>\n
Healthcare is like most other businesses that have customer service people; most of the people really are trying to help you and satisfy your question. Give people a chance to help you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(originally published March 30th, 2005) Earlier this evening I wrote my healthcare newsletter on the reasons for showing some compassion when people call up to talk about their hospital bills or physician bills. I stressed that, because healthcare is different than retail in that most people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come to us willingly, we need to try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}