Last time I had blood work done, my doctor and I decided on a set of cholesterol related markers beyond your typical cholesterol assay.
It took me a week and hours of phone calls to figure out what would be covered, and how much the non-covered tests would cost. The doctor pointed at the lab, the lab pointed at insurance, insurance pointed at the doctor.
Finally it was the lab that was able to produce numbers.
And when I was finally billed those numbers were still incorrect! (and thankfully cheaper)
It’s just so insane that the entire industry accepts that no one knows how much things are. Even the “financial services” team will just say “yeah that estimate is wrong” and not blush. What are you guys all doing?
my exact curiosity. They seem to have a rough scope on CPT codes ahead of time, with some buffer. It's baffling that the cost per CPT changes between estimate and billing. Id like to talk to a billing administrator to ask how that process works. Does the admin pad the doctor's figures with additional codes and markup?
It took me a week and hours of phone calls to figure out what would be covered, and how much the non-covered tests would cost. The doctor pointed at the lab, the lab pointed at insurance, insurance pointed at the doctor.
Finally it was the lab that was able to produce numbers.
And when I was finally billed those numbers were still incorrect! (and thankfully cheaper)