I really wanted to put this in IMHO. If any doctors, assistants or folks who do medical billing want to voice about the billing practice, I’d be glad to hear it.
That said, I just need to vent–so much for IMHO.
Back at the end of the year, one of my teeth broke. My last dentist had retired, so I called my wife’s dentist. From the start, this guy and his office pretty much rocked. Without getting into details, the staff was entirely competent, really went the extra mile and objectively discussed the options without trying to sell me something I didn’t want. I decided to go ahead with a crown and paid an outstanding balance along with my deductible for this year. They ground down the tooth and fitted a temporary cap, and I walked to the front where I was informed that I would need to pay the nine hundred dollar balance for the work before receiving the permanent crown, three weeks from now. My insurance may come through before then; otherwise I need the full amount.
I can tell the difference between a doctor and a banker, and I don’t want to leave them holding the balance. Their wanting the payment before completing the work is a fair policy, but the execution leaves just a little to be desired, like maybe stating this policy before starting the work. Had they mentioned this, I could have just had them build up the tooth then saved the cash for the crown. This would have cost fifty bucks more–not much, all considered.
What really pisses me off is that billing and payments seemed to be an option until today. The balance I mentioned before was for some work that my wife had done. My wife had mentioned that they had let her make payments, and I believe that the office mentioned that they would be willing to work with me on my payments as well (unfortunately, what they said was said in passing and I can’t pin down what was said.) In any case, I found that we owed a balance and covered it with my next paycheck, and we were running a credit when I showed up for the work.
As it stands, I’ve got a filed down tooth with a chunk of Bondo tacked onto it (which hopefully won’t fall out too often in the next month or two), and there’s a part of me that wants to tell them to keep the damn crown and call it even. Realistically though, if I can’t find the money in our budget I’ll just have to postpone the visit. I’m sure that we can calmly work this out later. They’re good folks. Perhaps in some ways they’re better than me, because for now I have to say that they did a piss-poor job with the way they handled this–at the very least, their timing sucks.