The typical hospital billing department is overworked, understaffed and buried under mounds of paperwork. It has to juggle charges submitted by perhaps a dozen or more hospital departments, is forced to work with an infinite variety of insurance forms and must prepare bills for hundreds of patients at any one time. There tends to be a high rate of job dissatisfaction and turnover among employees, who are usually underpaid.

Hospital billing systems often are complicated and conducive to error. Billing department personnel are not always encouraged to minimize those errors, because the hospital knows that most errors are in its favor. Hospital inventory control systems are also frequently complicated and conducive to error. A patient has to be billed for each item that is taken from inventory, and the patient who is billed is not always the patient who receives the item.

Billing errors frequently occur because a hospital charges the patient for services, tests, medications and supplies when the doctor orders them, not when the patient actually receives them. If the patient never receives them, perhaps because the doctor changes the order or the patient is discharged early, the charges are rarely removed from the bill.

When the patient is in the hospital for a very complicated service, such as surgery, the likelihood of errors increases greatly. The more complicated the services, the more tests, medications and supplies required, the more hospital departments involved and the longer the hospital stay, the greater the opportunity for errors.

Finding an error-free hospital bill is like finding a four-leaf clover. It happens, but it doesn't happen very often. The wonder is not that there are so many errors but that there are so few. The true wonder is that any error-free bills are ever produced.

As hospital bill auditors, we're thoroughly familiar with hospital billing practices and with the kinds of errors and overcharges that they produce. If you haven't already visited our home page and the rest of our site, please do so. Then put us to work on your hospital bills and watch us save you money.

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Hospital Billing Practices

The Kinds of Errors Hospital Bills Contain

Games Hospitals Play

ERISA and Hospital Bill Auditing

Third Party Administrators

The Importance of Medical Records

Our Position on Hospital Audit Policies

A Few of Our Success Stories