Hey all, I’d love some help over a terrible situation that happened to my girlfriend about a month ago. Keep in mind, I have never been in a crisis situation like this before, and neither I nor my girlfriend have not needed to deal much with hospital bills. We need some advice on the best things we can do to get these hospital bills as cleaply as possible since I think they could be up to $20,000 or more…
My girlfriend and I went surfing, and long story short, her board came up and slammed her on the head, causing a burst fracture on C1. Thankfully no nerve damage, but we did need to rescue her out of the water. At first, we went to urgent care because it was much closer. Per the physician’s advice, we took an hour ambulance ride to a hospital to get CT scans. The doctor wasn’t qualified to interpret the scan other than it was broken, so he recommended she get admitted to a hospital with a neurosurgeon and take a Trauma 1 bed overnight. Another 1.5-hour ambulance ride later, she got hooked in and received Norco, IVs, muscle relaxants, and anti-nausea. We stayed in the trauma care room for about 7 or 8 hours as we were waiting for the neurosurgeon’s final say on the matter. Turns out it was a stable fracture, meaning she was able to get released that morning with a hard neck brace for three months. It’s been exhausting
TL;DR, 1 urgent care visit, 2 hospital visits, 2 ambulance rides (2.5 hours total), lots of drugs for neck fracture.
The situation shes in is that she she began a full-time nursing position about 2 weeks prior after being a travel nurse. Throughout the incident I assumed she was covered by her new position since we clearly remember electing her insurance plan online. However, one of the workers there said she couldn’t find her under any insurance. Well, we came to find out that she was only technically enrolled for insurance beginning on midnight of the night of the incident. Urgent care and first hospital visit technically were not covered, and only a portion of the second visit may have been covered. Both of the ambulance rides ocurred while she technically was not covered. We were distraught, to be sure. We called her insurance but they said they need to get the bill first before they could tell us how much they could cover. It’s been 3 weeks and we only just not got our first hospital bill which came to $4,500, but it was not itemized. It just said to pay them as soon as possible or to get on a plan. We’re very concerned about the ambulance rides and the second hospital.
Well, my question is this. What can we do to mitigate these expenses as much as possible? Should we insist on getting an itemized list and see if we can’t talk services down? I hear you can do that using medical blue book. Should we fight with the insurance or something for our case? We thought for sure that she was enrolled in benefits but the fact that she was mere hours from being covered is absurd to me.
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Hey all, I’d love some help over a terrible situation that happened to my girlfriend about a month ago. Keep in mind, I have never been in a crisis situation like this before, and neither I nor my girlfriend have not needed to deal much with hospital bills. We need some advice on the best things we can do to get these hospital bills as cleaply as possible since I think they could be up to $20,000 or more… My girlfriend and I went surfing, and long story short, her board came up and slammed her on the head, causing a burst fracture on C1. Thankfully no nerve damage, but we did need to rescue her out of the water. At first, we went to urgent care because it was much closer. Per the physician’s advice, we took an hour ambulance ride to a hospital to get CT scans. The doctor wasn’t qualified to interpret the scan other than it was broken, so he recommended she get admitted to a hospital with a neurosurgeon and take a Trauma 1 bed overnight. Another 1.5-hour ambulance ride later, she got hooked in and received Norco, IVs, muscle relaxants, and anti-nausea. We stayed in the trauma care room for about 7 or 8 hours as we were waiting for the neurosurgeon’s final say on the matter. Turns out it was a stable fracture, meaning she was able to get released that morning with a hard neck brace for three months. It’s been exhausting TL;DR, 1 urgent care visit, 2 hospital visits, 2 ambulance rides (2.5 hours total), lots of drugs for neck fracture. The situation shes in is that she she began a full-time nursing position about 2 weeks prior after being a travel nurse. Throughout the incident I assumed she was covered by her new position since we clearly remember electing her insurance plan online. However, one of the workers there said she couldn’t find her under any insurance. Well, we came to find out that she was only technically enrolled for insurance beginning on midnight of the night of the incident. Urgent care and first hospital visit technically were not covered, and only a portion of the second visit may have been covered. Both of the ambulance rides ocurred while she technically was not covered. We were distraught, to be sure. We called her insurance but they said they need to get the bill first before they could tell us how much they could cover. It’s been 3 weeks and we only just not got our first hospital bill which came to $4,500, but it was not itemized. It just said to pay them as soon as possible or to get on a plan. We’re very concerned about the ambulance rides and the second hospital. Well, my question is this. What can we do to mitigate these expenses as much as possible? Should we insist on getting an itemized list and see if we can’t talk services down? I hear you can do that using medical blue book. Should we fight with the insurance or something for our case? We thought for sure that she was enrolled in benefits but the fact that she was mere hours from being covered is absurd to me.
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