Reviews of Advocate Health Center - Lincoln Park
Found 1 record
Horrible billing department - 01/18/2009 11:18:10
Olga from Chicago, IL
I can't say anything bad about the doctors, but the administrative staff (coding & billing departments) are absolutely insane. I went to see a doctor for my annual physical back in May of 2008. A month later, I got a bill which was for the regular office visit (my insurance pays 100% for the physical and nothing - due to deductibles - for the regular visits). I asked them to rebill this claim. One more month later, I called my insurance company to verify that the claim was resubmitted. Well, it wasn't. I called AHC back, and they tried to convince me that submission of the claim takes long time (well, I used to work as a AR Manager at a medical office and I know very well that the claim submission takes 1 or 2 minutes). In September, I got an EOB from my insurance company stating the AHC notified them that I have a secondary insurance. Well, I dealt professionally with my insurance company in the past, and I know that their system kicks out some claims for that reason. I called the insurance company, and I called AHC. I also submitted a complaint to AHC outlining that the simple claim submission shouldn't take 6 months. In December of 2008, I started getting the bills from AHC showing that I owe them money. I called my insurance company and they confirmed that AHC got paid in full. Bills continued to come. I submitted complaint through the Advocate Group website. Obviously, nobody reads them there. I called my insurance company, and asked the agent to call AHC directly and ask what they are doing. The agent called, was on hold for 10 minutes, eventually left a message to call her back. It's the end of January 2009, and AHC has not called my insurance company back.
One more thing, as I mentioned I worked with the Advocate Group in the past: our doctors saw the patients at Advocate. Certain insurance companies require pre-authorizations for the admissions. As a doctor's office, we couldn't get pre-authorization for the hospital visits. So, for several patients (whose bills ran well over $10k just for our services) we asked Advocate to get authorizations. The staff at the Patient Accounts Department wouldn't do it!!! We had to call a Manager to make them do anything at all.
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