What happened to Adams?
Adams said he flew to Arizona in January for a business trip, hiked during the day, went to dinner and felt light-headed. Friends called an ambulance that took him to the nearest emergency room at the Mayo Clinic.
He received IV fluid during the ride, and by the time he arrived at the hospital, felt much better. A test confirmed dehydration.
“Then, I get caught in the system,” Adams said. Over the next 18 hours, he received more IV fluids, lab tests, a chest X-ray to rule out a heart attack and observation time. The next morning, he was released, feeling fine.
“If I had known how much it would cost, I would’ve said ‘No thanks. I’ll just go home and drink some Gatorade.’
“I have a high deductible plan, so I knew I’d have to pay for the visit, but I was thinking $1,000 to $2,000 because I could get these services for $500 in my own neighborhood. You can have someone come to your house with IV fluid for a couple hundred bucks.”
The $5,000 bill left him “flabbergasted.” and costs more, even though The American College of Emergency Physicians classifies dehydration as a level 4 service.
He also found the hospital charged him 11 times the going rate in the region for his blood test, while his EKG was three times more expensive and his Xray twice as costly.
This step takes a lot of time and energy. People often “get tired and frustrated and give up,” he said, and that’s understandable.
● Hire a company to help.
“You need a lawyer to navigate the legal system so these companies found a gap and a need and may be able to save you” money, Adams said.
Where can people find companies to help?
vision, and new claims are entered, HealthLock can automatically analyze and flag each for potential errors, fraud or overbilling. Users don’t have to upload any information. It will look back up to two years to check for irregularities. If it finds them, users can opt to negotiate the problem themselves or use HealthLock, which will take 33% of the money it saves.
“The average family goes to the doctor and has about seven doctor bills a year,” said Scott Speranza, HealthLock’s founder and chief executive. “Our average return is over $350 a year per member.”
There’s also no time limit for each case. As long as HealthLock thinks it can recover savings for a user, it will work on it, Speranza said.
“We just returned $400,000 for (a) client that took us over two years to do so,” he said.