Ohio patients upset with virus-related medical fees
Official: ‘Hidden costs’ hitting every industry
Twice in less than two months last year, Nancy Keator was surprised and angered by extra fees tacked onto her medical bills.
In November and again in December, the Westerville resident had to have X-rays (at different facilities), and each time, the bill contained a fee attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic: One for $25 for “extra supplies, material and clinical staff ” and the other for $15 for additional cleaning.
Keator, 69, questioned the need for the charges (“Are you telling me you don’t normally clean between X-rays?” she asked), but what really got her was that neither facility told her about the fees ahead of time.
She only learned of them after getting the bill and discovering that her insurance company did not pay them.
“The whole thing seemed to be taking advantage of a bad situation,” Keator said. “I feel they are unnecessarily gouging people.”
She isn’t the only one. The Ohio Attorney General’s office has fielded 173 Covid-related billing complaints, ranging from landlord-tenant rental disputes to fitness centers still charging fees despite the gym being closed.
Of those complaints, 24 involved medical office fees. The Ohio Department of Insurance has had only one such complaint, a spokesman said.
To Keator’s first complaint, about the necessity of extra charges, medical officials say they help cover legitimate extra costs.
An American Dental Association (ADA) survey in December found that dentists’ costs for personal protective equipment (PPE) have roughly tripled since the start of the pandemic.
Todd Baker, chief executive officer of the Ohio State Medical Association, said that in addition to the “hard dollar” cost of purchasing more PPE and cleaning supplies, doctors and dentists also incur a “soft dollar cost” for
additional time and personnel needed to meet new safety protocols.
“For example, now we need someone by the front door doing temperature checks,” Baker said. “We do more screenings, calling everyone the morning of their appointment to see if they have any symptoms. We do additional cleaning.
“Those are all hidden costs that every industry is struggling with.”
Baker and others, though, agree with Keator on her second point: That providers should be upfront in telling patients about the additional fees.
“Both the ADA and the Ohio Dental Association have recommended to their members that if you have to raise your fees or charge some sort of PPE fees, it’s especially important to tell the patient in advance,” said David Owsiany, executive director of the Ohio Dental Association.
“You should explain to them that costs have gone up, we hope temporarily, and we have to recoup those costs to keep the doors open.
“I think almost all complaints could probably be avoided had there been better communication. Maybe, in a busy dental practice, they didn’t explain it well enough.”
Steve Wagner is executive director of UHCAN Ohio, a Columbus-based nonprofit organization that advocates for consumers on health care issues.
“It’s somewhat predictable that this would happen,” Wagner said. “Medical costs are relatively opaque to the consumer. You don’t find out about them until afterward, and we don’t think that’s right.
“What other product do you purchase and then later they say, ‘OK, here’s the bill?’ ”
Baker said the state medical association is calling for insurance companies to cover the Covid-19-related fees. A billing code has been created specifically for the fees, he said.
“To my knowledge, no insurance companies are paying for it right now,” he said. “We are in the advocacy stage of pushing for it at this point.”
A spokeswoman for the Washington, D.c.-based trade industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans said she didn’t have any “industry-wide information on practices regarding that billed fee in particular.”
She sent links to information on what various insurance companies have done to help consumers in the pandemic, such as waiving costs for COVID-19 testing and treatment, and waiving costs for telehealth services.
That didn’t help Keator, though. She ended up resolving the issue herself.
She said after calling both offices and complaining about the extra fees, both charges eventually were canceled.
“I told them, ‘I’m not paying this. I’m paying what the insurance company says I should pay,’ ” Keator said. kgordon@dispatch.com @kgdispatch
Platform Beer Company’s owners took to social media late Saturday in response to its Columbus taproom employees quitting amid allegations of low wages and unsafe working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Downtown business on North Sixth Street never opened Saturday and is temporarily closed. Its co-founders, Justin Carson and Paul Benner, said on social media about 10 p.m. Saturday that they will be meeting with the former employees to learn more about their concerns.
“Starting on Monday, we will be scheduling small group conversations with all employees, across all locations as an open forum to ask questions so we can address any issues immediately,” the post reads.
The Columbus taproom’s staff abruptly tapped out Saturday morning.
All six staff members quit, sending a letter to Carson accusing Platform of paying low wages while increasing hours and responsibilities; limited notifications of positive COVID-19 cases among employees; no taproom closure time to sanitize; mold issues in a freezer area that also is used to store food; and failing to fill the vacant general manager position.
Platform was founded in 2014 in Cleveland, where it has multiple locations, and it also has a taproom in Cincinnati.
The company was acquired by Anheuser-busch Inbev in 2019 as part of its Brewer’s Collective.
A Twitter user posted photos of the letter, along with a sign stating that the entire Columbus crew quit and that the taproom was closed until further notice.
The Dispatch checked on the business late Saturday afternoon and found the sign employees left was no longer visible, but the business was closed with no patrons or staff in sight.
Jen Trimmer, one of the employees that quit the Columbus taproom, said the sign was quickly taken down.
“We like the dynamic we have with each other and we like the work. But the short-sightedness of massively downsizing labor costs, under-appreciating employees, and ignoring the health and safety of our staff in more ways than one is frustrating, and we think the brand and staff both suffer for it,” the letter reads.
It is unclear how long the taproom will be closed.
Platform and Anheuser-busch Inbev did not respond Saturday to requests for comment from The Dispatch.
Trimmer, who had worked as a bartender at the taproom for about one year, said the letter was written by the entire staff and was sent to Platform over Slack, an app the company typically uses to communicate. She said the staff’s accounts were deleted quickly after sending the letter.
Leaving a letter to call attention to work conditions
Trimmer said the staff came to work, posted the sign, sent the letter and left, never opening the restaurant. She said the staff did this in solidarity to call attention to work conditions in the industry and to prevent the company from doing this to others.
“We want to make a change because I’m sure there are other people who might feel empowered at Platform, whether it’s up in Cleveland or in Cincinnati – we have other locations where people might be feeling this way, and there may be other people in the service industry in general who share our sentiments and have experiences like this,” Trimmer said.
In their late Saturday Facebook post, Platform’s co-founders disputed the allegations of unsafe conditions.
“Over the last year, our priority has been the health and safety of our employees and our guests. We have implemented health and safety protocols that closely follow CDC and local health authority guidelines, including contact tracing and proper communication following positive cases of COVID-19,” it reads.
Devlin Charlton, a former sales representative for Platform in Cleveland for about a year, left the company about a month ago and said he wasn’t surprised at what the employees’ letter described.
Charlton said he noticed a culture of turnover. One general manager at the Cleveland taproom was fired within a week for pushing back against issues similar to those in the letter, he said.
“This is something that’s common. Back in early January, December, right before I left, a bunch of brewers walked out of the Cleveland taproom,” Charlton said.
Charlton also described a culture where the “bottom line” was more important than employee safety, as he continued to sell to grocery stores instead of working from home during the pandemic at Platform’s direction, and issues with infected shipments in production. But production standards improved after Anheuser-busch took over, he said.
Charlton said working for a company affiliated with Anheuser-busch should be “like working for Disney” and “should be a job where people stay,” but that hasn’t been his experience.
“I can vouch I want to high-five and hug all of those Columbus taproom people because they shouldn’t have to put up with that stuff. And, you know, if it was one or two people here and there, maybe it’s a flip, but there’s definitely a pattern of people coming in and saying, ‘You know what? I don’t think so. I don’t have to deal with this. Goodbye,’ ” Charlton said.
Dispatch reporter Alissa Widman Neese contributed to this story. @sam_raudins sraudins@gannett.com