SATURDAY — Trying to keep track

Saturday and Sunday are off days for therapy so Nancy has directions to move body parts while in bed.  Does she do that? I don’t know.  She does fire-up her cell phone and so must use her hands, arms, and voice.  She tires easily, so that activity is still a bit limited.

On another topic, I had to deal with the local hospital about our share of the payments from last summer’s treatment (June & July).  Nancy entered the hospital via the emergency room, was admitted, and then had out-patient treatment after that.  These episodes triggered 3 billing events.

The billing agent has to submitted to the insurance company.  What they don’t pay is submitted to Medicare.  The remainder is our responsibility.

The hospital software is triggered at the end of each month to send us an overdue notice even though Medicare has yet to be heard from.  The billing agent must intervene manually to stop this overdue notice but may forget.  Then we get 3, more or less, identical letters (billing code and amount differ).  None of these do we have to pay but I had to call and remind the agent to do whatever the software requires (reset the date, I guess).

I say “we don’t have to pay” but, in fact, we will have to pay some part of them eventually but what and when are not known.  Anyway, so as to show our intent to pay we set up an auto-withdrawal from our bank to the hospital – so how does one be late with a payment when it is triggered by the hospital requesting if from the bank?   After the visit to the emergency room on Friday following Thanksgiving there was another $2,000 tacked on so I wanted to up the auto-payment.  How does one do that?  Nancy did it the first time.   The lady at the bank says I need Nancy’s password.  Fine.  She is totally sedated.  I had to wait until she was brought out of the (?) dark.  I had just gone through this same sort of thing with a credit union because a staffer there wrote 12/15/09 on a piece of paper and not 11/15/09.  I spent 25 minutes listening to ugly “on hold” music before I could get them to fix that.  What fun!

I would like to explain, but can’t, the three nearly identical pages of “this is not a bill” but it is an “important tax document” that I got from the insurance company.  An imaging firm (not part of the hospital) billed for reading 3 x-rays or something but the hospital had not yet billed for anything.  That’s still a mystery.

This past Friday the postal service brought a fancy multi-colored check – $64.92 – from the local hospital with accompanying documentation saying Invoice #CEMC4525.  It appears as though I billed them for something and they are paying me. I have no idea what this is about.  On Monday I will have to call the agent and inquire.

I have the feeling this is all going to get worse.