曼徹斯特醫院急診未做任何治療,卻向一女性病患收取 244 美元費用。

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gucci37
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註冊時間: 週三 3月 12, 2008 10:22 pm

曼徹斯特醫院急診未做任何治療,卻向一女性病患收取 244 美元費用。

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http://blogs.courant.com/george_gomboss ... .html#more
Manchester Hospital charges $244 for entering emergency room, but no help given to woman in pain
By George Gombossy on March 8, 2009 12:39 PM
Waiting 90 minutes in agonizing pain at the Manchester Memorial Hospital emergency room did not result in a Southington woman receiving any medical care.

What she did get was a bill for $244. It is a bill that even today the hospital defends.

For that hour and a half, Delaney La Rosa stood in the packed waiting room the evening before Thanksgiving last year as her abdominal pain went from bad to worse. She began vomiting uncontrollably.

Her husband, Larry Berk, kept running up to the receptionist, asking when his wife would be looked at. He said he couldn't get a straight answer.

"They were getting angry with him," she recalled. "He kept saying, 'She is throwing up. What can you do?'"

Frustrated and fed up, the couple decided to return home and call 911 for an ambulance. Within minutes, emergency medical personnel gave her morphine for the pain and medication to stop her vomiting.

The ambulance took her to Bradley Memorial Hospital in Southington, where doctors determined that she was most likely having an acute gall bladder attack. She was released a few hours later after being given more medicine to control her pain.

Instead of billing her insurance provider, Aetna, Manchester Hospital sent the $244.25 tab directly to La Rosa.

She and her husband were the wrong couple to bill for non-service. They actually can decipher medical bills and can tell you whether a charge is permissible or not.

La Rosa is a nurse and had previously been a medical fraud investigator with her own consulting business. She says one of her clients was the FBI. She is now working on master's degrees in three areas of nursing. Her husband is in the medical equipment business.

La Rosa said she went to Manchester Hospital at the suggestion of her physician that night because he was going to be at the hospital. However, when she got there, her doctor was dealing with a critically ill patient and telephoned the receptionist to have an emergency room physician examine La Rosa.

La Rosa says she suffers from an auto immune disorder which results in her being in pain almost all the time.

But the pain she experienced that night was much more severe.

"I can handle pain," she said Friday. "So If I say I am hurting, it means I am in serious pain."

On Jan. 3, she wrote a blistering letter to Peter Karl, president and CEO of the hospital, demanding that the bill be canceled as she was provided no medical service.

"Your facility is a shining example of what is wrong with healthcare," she wrote him.

And she warned the hospital not to attempt to collect the bill through her insurance company.

"If I learn that you've attempted to submit it for reimbursement to any insurance company, I will file a complaint with the Connecticut Attorney General's office," she wrote Karl.

Karl did not respond, but S. Ashley Thompson, the hospital's "patient representative" wrote back to her that she was sorry "that the wait time was of concern to you." She explained that 63 percent of the time, patients are seen by a doctor within 38 minutes at the emergency room.

But, Thompson wrote, she checked with the "appropriate managers and unfortunately the bill is correct."

"Once you become a patient the charges begin and although you left before being seen by a physician the charges are due," Thompson wrote.

Dennis McConville, Manchester Hospital vice president and spokesman, looked into the bill at my request and also said it was legitimate. He said hospital records show that La Rosa was given "triage assessment by a registered nurse" and was then registered in the hospital's medical records system.

"The charge for that service is reflected in the bill that was sent to her," he said in an e-mail. "Manchester Memorial Hospital is not alone in the practice of charging for triage assessment when patients decide to leave before being seen by a physician."

"While it is unfortunate that the patient felt that she should have been seen by a physician sooner, she did receive an assessment by a licensed professional to determine the severity of her complaint so that her care could be triaged given all of the patients being treated at that time," he wrote.

There are a few problems with it.


First, La Rosa and her husband say they have no recollection of her vital signs being taken by anyone at the hospital.

Second, they don't believe the hospital can legally bill them if only a registered nurse had taken her vital signs.

But the real issue here is that La Rosa was billed for nothing. She got no help, no medicine, no relief, not a chair, and not even a towel to wipe her face with.

The honchos at the hospital had two chances in the clear light of day to rethink that bill, and both times they concluded that they deserved the money.
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此文轉自 ptt 八掛版,
美國醫院果然賺很大,RN 量個 vital sign,
就可以 charge 244 美元!
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Sawa
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文章: 1138
註冊時間: 週一 12月 31, 2007 3:06 pm

Re: 曼徹斯特醫院急診未做任何治療,卻向一女性病患收取 244 美元費用。

文章 Sawa »

沒辦法~米國人比較公事公辦
他已經進去醫院掛了號跟量血壓,但是是自己等不了離開的
醫院經營者覺得,這必須要Charge 護理師幫他量血壓的錢跟掛號費(不然哪來賺的錢發薪水哩..不過粉貴~一次可以買到一支超好的聽診器)
台灣的醫護算好的跟弱勢的~ 常常免費答問題跟量血壓...有的不是病的(生理正常現象或是身體正常構造)來看病我都解釋完退掛~我是不是傻了點 (窮)
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shuhuez5460
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註冊時間: 週三 2月 20, 2008 10:15 am

Re: 曼徹斯特醫院急診未做任何治療,卻向一女性病患收取 244 美元費用。

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