<p>We received a hefty bill today for medical treatment for my daughter. Her name is on the bill and they have our insurance information. Not only did she not receive this treatment but she was not even in the state on the date it occurred which fortunately we can easily prove (we have a lot of witnesses that can confirm she was on a cruise ship and not giving birth in a hospital on that date!!). </p>
<p>The charges have already gone through our insurance and they paid some, though not all, so we have a lot of sorting out to do. The office sending the bill is the same financial office that does our family doctors billing but it is not our family doc. </p>
<p>Anyone ever had anything like this happen?</p>
<p>You can just imagine the phone call with out daughter when we received the bill!</p>
<p>We received a hefty bill today for medical treatment for my daughter. Her name is on the bill and they have our insurance information. Not only did she not receive this treatment but she was not even in the state on the date it occurred which fortunately we can easily prove (we have a lot of witnesses that can confirm she was on a cruise ship and not giving birth in a hospital on that date!!).</p>
<p>The charges have already gone through our insurance and they paid some, though not all, so we have a lot of sorting out to do. The office sending the bill is the same financial office that does our family doctors billing but it is not our family doc.</p>
<p>Anyone ever had anything like this happen?</p>
<p>You can just imagine the phone call with out daughter when we received the bill!</p>
<p>We had this happen once. It took months to sort it out. Our doctor wrote to say that the treatment on the bill was NOT ever done with the family member. I don’t know how it happened…but what a mess. Apparently keyed in wrong on a number of different levels.</p>
<p>I was so intrigued by your thread title (isn’t there a contest thread somewhere) that I clicked right away. What a story! I am dying to hear the explanation - does your D have a common name?</p>
<p>That is what we are thinking as the bill does come from the same billing office our Doc uses - that somehow they sent it to the wrong person. I can imagine this is going to be a pain to sort out. </p>
<p>Not to mention the medical treatment my husband and I almost needed when we opened the bill and got this unexpected news!!</p>
<p>mods - i accidentally posted this thread twice because I thought I had changed the title of the thread to “eek - my daughter had a baby - or not” and could not find the thread. Sorry.</p>
<p>Now, just think of the confusion if due to this insurance mix up incorrect information was added to your daughters medical database that eventually creates a profile. At a later time could this information be used in a way to bill her differently for her own medical insurance? Perhaps not for delivering a baby-that-wasn’t, however what if the bill was for something that might put her in a greater risk group?
I hope you are able to get this sorted out without too much pain yourself! I will assume you have ruled out the very slight chance that your daughter ‘loaned’ her insurance card to a friend who had no coverage at all? It does happen. Usually for strep tests and antibiotics, not pregnancies.</p>
<p>Is it possible that this is a form of identity theft? That someone stole or got access to your daughter’s insurance info who didn’t have insurance and gave birth using her identity? It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to do.</p>
<p>I posted on the other version of this thread that I think it sounds like identity theft. Someone could have stolen your daughter’s insurance info and gotten health care pretending to be her.</p>
<p>My husband has spent the last few hours making phone calls trying to sort it out. My daughter phoned the hospital to try and find the contact number for the doctor named on the bill. She is not real happy! What fun - not.</p>
<p>Good point about checking her medical records to make sure the “birth” is not somehow on there for ever! I didn’t even think of that.</p>
<p>Do you have a common name? Sounds like a mix-up in the billing office. Still, doesn’t the hospital get all the insurance info on the chart? Maybe it is a case of identity fraud, but with your insurance instead of a credit card.</p>
<p>Keep us updated, I wanna hear how this turns out!</p>
<p>I will. We have been calling our insurance, the billing company, trying to contact the doc. </p>
<p>Somewhat scarily we also had an incident with a credit card at about the same time. We got a phone call from the CC company asking if we had made a $1000 charge on a particular card which we had not (and both cards were in our possession). They already suspected it was a fraud before they called us but would not tell us any detail or how they knew. This card is not one that my daughter had signing powers on.</p>
<p>I would even worry about the hospital entering things into her medical records from this other person (blood type, allergies, etc.), that may be drawn upon if your daughter were to actually be a patient there. Could she be given the wrong blood type in an emergency? I might request an appointment with a hospital representative to go over these concerns. This doesn’t really fall under billing, or risk management, however there has to be an advocate that can help you make sure the records are no longer tied to your daughter or your insurance. Just getting the bill fixed isn’t going to wipe their records.</p>
<p>We are hoping it is a billing error not a hospital error. The bill was from a billing company for an anesthesiologist for an epidural during labor. We have not seen any actual bills for the birth or from an ob or the hospital. If it turns out there are actual hospital records then we will definitely be down there talking to them. Actually if it is the hospital in the town the billing company is in she has been a patient there - had ortho surgery there back when she was 8. Will keep you posted.</p>