Two years ago, Mike Heritage, a retired commercial real estate investor in Colorado Springs, began receiving what he figured were promotional emails about setting up an account with Bank of America, a financial services company.
“I thought it was a scam,” he said. “I don’t need another credit card.”
The emails kept coming, and Heritage kept deleting them.
“There was no explanation for them,” he said.
Heritage figured out in May that the communication was part of the system that Centura Health, which owns Penrose-Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs and other hospitals around the state, uses to issue refunds for payment overages patients have been charged.
“I finally found out Centura wanted me to get a Bank of America card, and I would use it as a debit card and use the refund that way,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”
When Heritage requested from Centura the original letter he would have received about the change in how refunds are handled, he received a written reply from the patient billing department saying they didn’t have a copy.
“I wonder how many other people have gotten this Bank of America email and got rid of it,” Heritage said. “My concern is that there’s probably a lot of people owed a lot of money by Centura that don’t know it.”
Four recent complaints about Penrose-St. Francis on the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado’s website are related to medical charges or billing.
One person said he attempted for months in 2021 to obtain a refund for incorrect charges, was told it was issued, but he was unaware of the bank card method. His case was resolved in January, according to the complaint.
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has received 51 complaints this year to date regarding hospital system billing complaints from patients who received services from various health care systems, said spokesman Lawrence Pacheco. He said he could not discuss the nature of the complaints or comment on any possible investigations.
The majority of feedback about the Bank of America patient refund cards, which Centura Health started using in 2019, has been positive, according to Penrose-St. Francis spokeswoman Becky Brockman.
The prepaid cards “give patients quick, easy and convenient access to their funds,” she said via email.
Patients can use the cards to make a purchase or receive cash at any bank and from Bank of America ATMs, Brockman said. Patients also can pay future Centura charges with the refund money on the cards.
“Prior to the bank-card program, refund checks usually took two weeks or up to a month to reach the patient,” Brockman said. “Now, the patient receives the refund on the Bank of America card within a week.”
Heritage said he’s still owed hundreds of dollars from 2020 charges that he unknowingly overpaid on bills but has not received because of the communication snafu about the excess charges.
He’s unable to sign up online for the Bank of America refund card because he said his credit has been frozen due to a hacking incident.
Hospitals use different methods of repaying overage charges, said Cara Welch, spokeswoman for the Colorado Hospital Association, a trade group.
“Hospitals’ and health systems’ billing is an incredibly complex issue, and Colorado hospitals are committed to being accurate and timely so that patients know what to expect,” Welch said.
In Colorado, health care professionals and facilities are not required by law to submit their health care prices to any government agency for review or approval.
But Colorado’s Comprehensive Health Care Billing Transparency Act, which took effect Jan. 1, 2019, requires facilities and providers to disclose health care charges for specific medical services.
“Hospitals are diligent to repay what is owed to a patient when an overage does occur, and they may have a variety of ways to pay that back to the patient,” Welch said, “allowing for the fact that a credit card rebate, check or other traditional repayment method may not work for all patients.”
Medical billing errors are common, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in March, in releasing a report on “the complicated and burdensome nature of the medical billing system in the United States.”
Patients often have difficulty getting errors corrected or resolved, the report said, due to human mistakes, opaque pricing, miscoding of services and complex insurance coverage.
Medliminal, a medical cost containment service, estimates more than 80% of medical bills contain errors.
Welch said she isn’t aware of any statewide tracking of medical billing excesses.
Brockman did not respond to questions about the amount of overages Penrose-St. Francis or Centura Health accrue each year, or how many people are refunded money on charges.
The process Brockman described of how the bank-card refund system works isn’t what Heritage experienced. Brockman said refund cards are sent to the patient with a letter indicating what the refund is for and instructions on how to activate it.
Patients also can request a check refund directly from Bank of America, she said, and if a card is lost, stolen or thrown away by accident, patients can call Bank of America or Centura’s customer service line to request a new one be issued.
Heritage said the only communication he received was through the emails he thought were a solicitation from Bank of America to generate business. Instead, he said he think the way patient refunds now are being handled is more misleading.
“In my opinion, it’s a new revenue stream for Centura because people aren’t using these cards,” he said. “We just want a check with our money back.”
Source: gazette.com
