I recently went to see a PCP for an annual preventative exam. During the visit the PCP went through my medical history with me and asked if there was anything I’d love to share. I brought up an ankle pain and she said a PT would be able to look at it better and gave me some follow up PT referrals after. I had no idea this less than 5 min conversation would result in a $270 charge. The PCP billed a 30-min diagnostic code for ankle pain. It’s crazy. If I knew, I would have kept quiet and brought up nothing. I’ve tried to dispute this several times with Swedish but their billing department insists that there is no coding change based on the PCP’s documentation. I feel frustrated and blindsided by how Swedish is handling this. At this point, they are refusing to take any further action. I do annual preventative exams and this is the first time I am being charged for something like this. I’ve seen on reddit where multiple people have brought up the same concern. As a healthcare worker myself I struggle to navigate our healthcare system so I can only imagine how much harder it is for others. It’s an additional patient burder to do all their homework pre/post seeing a provider. I feel extremely disheartened (once again) with how broken our healthcare system is.
What are my other options to dispute this charge? Or should I just take the L and treat this as an expensive lesson to not ever bring anything up again to my provider during a preventative visit?
submitted by /u/wilderlights
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