Since I have a family, I deal with medical bills quite often. It’s just a fact of life when you have two kids.
One thing I cannot understand is how inept our medical system is at billing. This should be a solved problems and here are my recommendations for Allina mostly:
- Give me a login, or have me sign up (or at least be able to)
- Consolidate ALL OF MY BILLS under that single account
- Let me sign on and see all of my current, past, and pending bills
- Allow me to pay for the bills from that site
- Give me information about how much I have spent historically
- Be more transparent with where the money is going
- Profit?
I know I’m asking a lot, but we are talking about millions upon billions of dollars here, so having a good system for customers to see information and pay bills would be great.
5 replies on “Medical Services Billing”
I think some of the problem is that no one knows if the insurer or the provider ought to be providing that in. If you are insured, to some extent you are not the customer – the insurer is. Some insurers provide amazing documentation and information. Some are so absolutely horrible they shouldn’t even be allowed to be in business.
Sadly, those types of semantics are what is keeping the whole system back from making any progress. No one wants to take responsibility (including the government) and so nothing really gets done. Band aids get added onto past band aids and they all stink.
What you said still doesn’t stop Allina from providing a competent payment portal along with the ability to resend the bill to insurance. It would cut down on staff time being used for mundane stuff.
Ahh you poor Americans and your for profit health care system.
Definitely want to leave it in the hands of a governmental body that only accepts checks for bills or requires you to fax in your information.
Yup.
That was overly dismissive. What I should have said is that the US government has enough issues on its plate with the programs and industries it already runs … taking over another one does not seem prudent nor sensible at the moment.