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by johannbok 1323 days ago
That's right, only there is no normal physician visit that bills $1300. The absolute highest reimbursement you're gonna get for an outpatient visit - a level 5 evaluation and management first-time patient visit plus double-coding an 'prolonged visit for high complexity care' (some handful of insurers allow triple-coding a G2212) - (a 99205 + G2212 x 2) is 244.99 + something like $30 (I don't recall the G2212 reimbursement off the top of my head, but it's in that ballpark), for a total of about $275. +/- some adjustment for geography.

That's not what patients pay - that's the total allowable reimbursement to the doc via medicare.

I use medicare numbers here because almost all private insurers negotiate as %medicare. If I'm a hot specialty people are willing to pick an insurance plan over (say, cardiology) and there's a shortage of my folks in the area, I might negotiate up to something like 110-120% of medicare. Most of the time I'll be happy to get 105% medicare, and some folks will end up getting something like 95% of medicare.

To hit $1300 there'd have to be:

-A procedure, likely an inpatient or facility service, such as a small outpatient surgery, or an infusion. - Your doc has an in-house blood work lab and your insurer doesn't cover it, and the bill is actually a lab work bill

That latter bit is a gray area - it's actually barred under the Stark Law, as clinical lab work is considered a Designated Health Service that's barred from self-referral, if it's a third-party lab that they own or co-own. If it's their own actual in-clinic lab, though, I'm unsure of how that works out (I don't run my own lab, so I just know of this second-hand).

If you have a private-information-redacted copy of a 'normal' bill for $1300, I'd be happy to eyeball it - either to let you know something is off and worth appealing, or to learn something new for my self.

1 comments

I did not intend to claim that the doctor got paid $1,300 for a consultation (that person wrote they received lab work too).

I was clarifying what arkades claimed, which I interpreted as the EOB does not state the true remuneration for the healthcare provider.

Every EOB I’ve ever seen includes both the fantasy number (that no one ever pays or is charged) and the discount negotiated rate which is what the provider actually gets paid including your portion and the insurance paid portion.