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Shady St. Luke's?
(By Anonymous) [No, not them, but a well-respected writer who choose SFist in which to rant about their woeful experience at St. Luke's, using a veil of anonymity. -- SFist]
The billing department at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco is a shady operation. Last month we received two bills for about 250 bucks each. Our primary doctor is based out of St. Luke's, so most medical needs are taken care of there. One of the bills was for services this year, and since $250 is my insurance's yearly deductible, we paid it, no questions asked. But the second bill, you see, was for services from 2007. When we called St. Luke's to ask about it, they said that Aetna had paid for the services in 2007, but then "took the money back."
WTF?
So. We called my insurance, and asked them about it and they had no idea what St. Luke's was talking about, and told us to check our records and see if we had indeed paid them last year around the time the services were done. Alas, we checked our records, and could find nothing indicating that we had paid St. Luke's at that time, so: we went ahead and forked over the money.
Yesterday, though, we get another bill from St. Luke's, for $285, for services done in 2006. 2006?! Once again, we called them and said, "um, wtf?" And again they told us that Aetna had "taken the money back." They said Aetna must be doing some kind of audit and found out they had overpaid a bunch of stuff, or some such bullshit. Then the lady on the line, who was looking up my account, got kind of quiet, said something like "Shoot...uh, can you hold on a sec?," put us on hold, and then came back and asked if she could call mus back. She needed to "email a colleague" about my balance. OK. Fine.
So, about 30 minutes later she calls back and tells us that the bill was a mistake. And my balance? Is zero.
Shady. Shit.
We were in the middle of work, so we couldn't get into asking what the hell the mistake was about, and whether the previous $250 we had mailed them was ALSO a mistake, which sucks. But nonetheless we're glad we called and complained.
But! What about people who don't know to question these things? How much shadiness is St. Luke's getting away with here? Any similar experiences? Do tell.