What would you do if you requested an itemized bill from a major well-known medical facility and received yours PLUS R’s from Columbia, MD? How would you handle it? Would you contact R? Throw his away? Contact the billing office on Monday and ask them? Some other option?
This is not a billing office we’ve ever been fond of and I can’t help but wonder how many folks have seen my records. Apparently, no one considered paying them though… but I can understand that. Sorry R. I’m not paying yours either.
I’m mainly debating sending his to him or throwing them away and hoping it really was a one time deal.
I would contact the office.
I would express concern that R didn’t receive their bill because it mistakenly got into your envelope.
(I might also mention this is a HIPAA violation).
That way the office could resend before claiming R’s account is in arrears.
I would send it back to the medical facility, mark the envelope Attn: Legal Department, and include a note. I am not in the medical field, but I think this would be a HIPAA violation. This billing office needs to be more careful!
Most hospitals have quality assurance departments. Their job b is to follow up and research reported problems. I’d send the misdirected bill to them, with a note of explanation. Privacy is meaningless if it only gets lip service. HIPAA violations are a pet peeve.
Agree that it is best to send it back to Quality Assurance, if you can figure out address with note that this is HIPPA violation.
We have gotten a document from OPM federal govt Office of Personnel Mgmt that had H’s name and SSN but all the other info on the form belonged to other people. I got it corrected but wonder if someone else got HIS name and info.
I would call the office and inform them, but I would just shred or throw it away. They can send the bill to the right guy; it’s not my job. And I think it’s silly to send the bill back. It’s not as though it’s a sacred piece of paper. They can print others.
Yes definitely call. They will likely ask you to destroy the papers, however each business has their own procedures. It is an incident, and they will need to internally investigate, if for no other reason than to ensure it is an isolated event and not a multi member impact. They may ask you for some specific information about your original request to help them track what happened.
If you really want to make mischief, then let R know. He’s the aggrieved party; let him take legal action if he wants.
I have a name that is very similar to someone else’s name in my town – both the first and last names are off by one letter. I called my doctor once and requested that they mail me written prescriptions. I never received them, so I called again. They swore they sent them. It turns out, of course, that the other woman received them. She called me once to chat because our names are so familiar, and she mentioned the prescriptions to me. I was really pissed at the doctor’s office.
I think we are assuming that this is a case of an agent accidentally picking up R’s bill along with OPs, not a systemic breakdown or willful malicious action. That’s why the facility needs to be notified to investigate. I cannot speak to all businesses that handle phi, or even any specific one, but it is my experience that R would be notified of the breach as part of the investigation.
However, it is absolutely OPs prerogative to notify R if s/he feels that is the best action. I wouldn’t disagree on that, and if it were me would likely appreciate the heads up.
We are required to report any breaches of hipaa to our privacy office so they can deal with them appropriately. That may include notifying the other party. (I’m In accounting, so not quite sure of the privacy office’s procedures.)
In any event, I’m sure the process is similar for the medical facility so I would recommend that you let them know what you’ve received. Just my opinion.
Ok, I’ll see if I can find a number for Quality Assurance and give them a call on Monday.
I’m still on the fence with notifying R myself or not. I don’t know him. We don’t even live in the same state. I have no desire to “use” any of the info I have (nor do I even know why it might be useful).
But I wonder if my bills have ever gone to anyone else, and if so, would I want to know. I’m not sure. I don’t expect I’d actually do anything about it (sue or whatever) unless it happened more than once.
I really like to think this was a one time slip up, but with the number of times we’ve had to talk with this billing office (NOT about this) and the number of bills they’ve had to resend because they didn’t send me the correct type or correct amounts (we’re with Health Share rather than insurance, so submit bills ourselves) does make me wonder about overall quality. This particular bill goes back to Dec 2015 and they finally got around to sending it to us a couple of weeks ago - no late notice - just a “first” bill. (Then this is the correct version we got in Friday after calling - again - since the one they sent was the wrong type.) R’s bills are from May 2016.
Where the heck has my bill been for 5-6 months?
Or do I just stay satisfied that I’ve kept a few extra hundred in my pocket over that time?
R’s bill is in the thousands, but he also has health insurance, so I’m not even sure he was going to see this bill or if it was going to be submitted to his insurance company.
Calling some sort of Quality Assurance will happen (Monday).
What about R?
FWIW… every other health facility we deal with has been awesome with billing. It’s just this one that drives me crazy. They need to go to their University and hire someone who just graduated. Even if that person has a 2.0 GPA they could probably do a better job coming up with a workable system (sigh).
Companies have procedures in place to handle these issues (which happen accidentally with brokerage statements, bank statements, health statements, etc.) Just mail it back to them telling them it was sent in error and let them follow their procedures (it may be a bigger problem with a computer mistake that happened to many people). They may need to report it to a regulatory agency and/or follow up with procedures to decide how to prevent future occurrences and what they “owe” R (credit check service, etc.)
“Why is no one suggesting that you send it to R??!! HE is the one harmed here.
HE NEEDS to know, IMHO. I’d copy to legal, but let the poor guy know!”
If I receive R’s info, realize it’s a mistake and throw the paper away, he’s not really harmed. Let the company re-issue the bill to him. I just kind of feel correcting other people’s mistakes is not my problem to worry about.
If you received a package meant for R, would you spend your own time and money schlepping it to the post office to get it to him, or would you call the company, let them know and let them decide whether they want to pick up the package from you or just have you keep it and they’ll send another one to R?
It sounds like a mistake was made. Have you never made a mistake? Call the office , let them know what happened. If it was my office I would look into what happened, write it in my complaint log and make certain it was an accident and not a systemic problem. We’d apologize to you and there really isn’t much more to be done.
@Justamom5465 Thanks for that link. I would expect them to consider this (correctly) a very low risk issue and probably not notify him at all. That’s probably best. I’ll still let them know in case they think they sent it to him or his insurance company.
To those who think I’m too outraged over it. I’m not outraged at all. I consider it another eyeroll from a bad system - another addition to continual problems, though usually the problems are more math/accounting and/or which papers to send.
I just wasn’t sure how to handle it or even if I would want to know if my bills had been sent to someone else.
Fortunately this place isn’t local to me, so it’s probably a non-issue even if they have been. If it had been one of my local places it could be different considering I work in our local high school (and have for 16 years) plus hubby is well known via his job (different circle) so odds of being known by the recipient would be far greater.
I wouldn’t know R if we were sitting side by side in the waiting room another time.
Nonetheless, you shouldn’t have it. It would completely creep me out to receive a forwarded medical bill from a private party, and it would creep me out even more if that person called or emailed me (how would you even get that information in the first place?).
Make it very clear to the provider that R apparently never received his bill; I’d put it in writing so that that isn’t overlooked, and may even make it onto his billing records. Whether you return the bill to the provider or shred it probably doesn’t matter. Just don’t reach out to R. You have no business knowing anything about his medical life.
Agree, if I were R I would NOT want to be contacted by a stranger and worry about if said stranger may misuse my info. Definitely call and written contact with company who sent you bill in error, notifying them of error.
