There’s nothing more frustrating or disheartening than opening up your mail and finding a medical bill that’s way more than you thought it would be. Unfortunately, we’ve all been there before. Maybe you were uninsured and you tweaked your knee and this happened. Maybe you have insurance but you didn’t realize you’d have to pay this much out of pocket.
Regardless of how it happened, the fact of the matter is that each and every day patients are finding themselves struggling to stay afloat under the burden of inflated medical bills that, in many cases, they simply can’t afford to pay. But what if that’s not the way it had to be? Price transparency is helping to lower health costs for patients. What if there was a simple way for patients to dispute their bills and cut out the unnecessary charges?
The first step you can take to be a better healthcare consumer is to do your research. Doing your research consists of so much more than just figuring out what procedures you need and where to get them. It’s about educating yourself by finding price estimates and starting a conversation about costs so you have a better understanding of how much a procedure might set you back.
The second step is medical bill negotiation. Opening a medical bill that’s triple the amount you thought it would be is overwhelming. Now we are going to be able to help negotiate a bill down to something that’s manageable for you. The issue so far has been that the average healthcare consumer doesn’t have any resources to do so.
READ MORE: Stages of Grief While Reading Medical Bills
We’ve been where you are and we’re here to answer patients’ questions. At heart, we have all been patients and we’ve wondered how it’s possible that something we thought would cost $500 ended up being billed for $2000. We know how frustrating it is to have taken the first step, done your research, and not been rewarded for it. Now we want to do everything we can to make sure no one else ever has to go through that.
Soon, we’ll be partnering with a group that helps patients take the second step, to review their medical bills for errors and money saving opportunities. We will be able to negotiate directly with the billing company on their behalf of the patient. This is an option most patients don’t even know is available to them, but it’s one that we think our patients deserve to have. We’re working as hard as we can to make this a reality for our patients, but we also want to make sure it’s a service you guys feel would be valuable.
