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gracetw22 t1_iu44viw wrote

Just another day of trying to do some gentle parenting in the face of a kid who isn’t gentle toddler-ing. Nothing like getting slapped across the face before 8 am for suggesting someone has a funky grundle and needs changed.

May drive up to watch the Washington International Horse Show: www.WIHS.org but more likely will watch on live stream and keep working on my magnum opus billing dispute to VCU health. I’m not sure how they can just not bill for something for almost 6 months and then sprinkle in some other random items my insurance denied and fire it off to see what happens. What really chaps my ass is the “decalcification” charge for a bone marrow biopsy. I asked the billing lady on the phone if she felt like that really should be an extra service to handle the bone part of a bone marrow biopsy, and of course she was way out of her depth there but when she reread it she was like “yeah, huh, wow that sounds like it hurts…”

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MediocreMuseRVA t1_iu479xs wrote

Been there with the kiddos - a good RVA resource is Meganne at https://www.bekindcoaching.com

They have a broad social media presence and a podcast.

I'm so sorry about the billing dispute, does r/rva have any CPT coders that could do a deep review of the itemized bill?

Also, see if it falls under this? https://scc.virginia.gov/pages/Balance-Billing-Protection

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gracetw22 t1_iu4a512 wrote

I’ll check it out! I am honestly pretty ok, it’s a little phase he’s in and just need to get through it until he learns a different thing to do, but it sure isn’t my choice of activity before my cup of coffee.

I would happily pay someone to do a review of the bill- I tried a couple of the services that advertise that but the two I got in touch with don’t do anything with cancer treatment I guess, or because I’ve already paid so much this year the balance is too low for there to be any meat on the bone for them.

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hipscrack t1_iu5y8vm wrote

I'm not an expert by any means, but I think they treat the decal as an additional process that's done to the biopsy. So 88305 for the bone marrow bx + 88311 for having to decal it, so they can charge for the procedure and charge for the reagent.

Hospital billing is stupid.

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gracetw22 t1_iu6flax wrote

Probably, I’m just a little salty that it’s around 60k of total lab and pathology charges and they couldn’t throw in making the bone less bone-y - there are a bunch of separate charges for getting it, another one for preparing, several for all the different readings… feels like buying a new car and hearing the gas cap is an extra 50 bucks

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