Comments on: i should’a been a doctor

By: R. Stein

R. Stein — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:38:40 +0000

The charge for the procedure IS high, but part of the payment is being able to diagnose the nursemaids elbow in the first place. As several respondents have described here, a lot of docs (usually adult docs), don’t know what to do and rack up all kinds of ridiculous charges. So the 24640 is comparatively reasonable. When the doc knows what it is and immediately fixes it, she/he makes it look easy. But a lot of experience went in to that.
It is a wacky system that pays the doc for this, and pays nothing for the 40 minutes spent helping you breastfeed, or potty train, or solve bedtime problems. Nobody complains that the doctor spent too much time doing that.

By: Tracy I

Tracy I — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:18:35 +0000

I am do frustrated what’s even worse is to hear this is happening to everyone. My 2year old came home from her grandparents house screaming in tears, hubby said his dad was playing an her arm popped, we took her to the ER unfortunately without health insurance, since it is not offere at either of our jobs. I recieved 2 bills. One for 601 from the hospital after a 100$ discount for not having insurance (which the nurse said was basically a bill to use the hospital) the second is for 717 from the dr who we never saw. We only saw a nurse and were in and out in 10 minutes. So I am under the impression that the Popsicle he gave her was $200 and then the rest for treatment? So frustrating. I understand it’s our bad for not having insurance, but when it’s $300 a month and we would still pay because of the high deductible?
No one will really explain to me why the bill is this high but after reading the posts I am going to see how it is billed further..

By: TJohn

TJohn — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:27:33 +0000

we’re going through the hoops with the hospital and Dr right now. We got billed $1,300 and have to pay it all due to my husbands company only offering a high deductible plan so everything comes out of pocket till we meet $3,000. We got the hospital to lower their bill by $130 by offering to pay in full and now we’re trying to get the Dr to lower his portion at least a little. $613 to see her all of 3 minutes. You can’t convince me that’s a fair price no matter how long he went to school for!

By: micky dennis

micky dennis — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:16:04 +0000

I paid a plumber 120.00 to stick his hand in my sink and pull out a toy. He did not have to complete 4 yrs of college, 4 yrs of medical school, and at least a three year residency. Your doctor is paying for staff, outrageous malpractice insurance (thank those lawyers, who also are not trained nearly as long), student loans that take forever to repay, rent, etc, expensive vaccines,and supplies and labs which often insurance does not reimburse for. Every year insurance companies and especially government run ones, require physicians to do more and more, buy supplies which are not reimbursed, while compensating the physician less and less. Many pediatricians are closing their practices.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:14:09 +0000

First, if you think the physician is walking away with all that money, you’re insane. Most will only get a portion.

Second, the fee is not for the 5 minutes it may take to manipulate the elbow. The fee is for the ability of the person to make the diagnosis, treat the problem appropriately, and assume the liablility of having treated said problem. You’re not paying for the 5 minutes, you’re paying for the 11+ years of education/training that person did to be qualified to take care of the problem.

If you think that’s bad; look at lawyers. The lawyer that helped close on my house made 2 grand for doing some paperwork which his secretary probably did in about 20 minutes.

By: bart

bart — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:55:05 +0000

Same experience. Saw doctor for 5 min, INCLUDING Q and A. Got a bill for $387.00. they won’t budge. Problem is we asked what it would cost and they told us it would be a normal doctor visit because the procedure was incredibly common and not a big deal. The Official Journal of the American Association of Pediatrics reads that this procedure is so easy to do that most doctors will tel parents over the phone what to do with nearly identical results, and for no charge! Insurance company said they, if they were paying for it, would have paid out around 125.00, or a normal doctor visit.

So, because we are paying cash, we have to pay triple????

By: Reddy

Reddy — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:24:21 +0000

My 19 month old had similar problem while I was sitting in a sofa and tried to lift him by holding his two wrists to put him in my lap and during which he complained about pain and he was holding his arm and crying saying “boo boo”. We were little upset and waited for 20minutes and it was 7.45pm and then quickly wanted to take him to urgent care which is five minutes away to be safe side. He was seen by a doctor for about 1 minute. He twisted and folded his arm for couple times. Though my son was crying until doctor fixed his arm(he normally cries every time a nurse or doctor touches him).
After twist and rotate doctor said this could be nursemaids thing and he asked us to take a x-ray and then walked out to make arrangements for x-ray and as it takes few minutes for operator to get it ready dr came back and was checking my son and my son started doing all high fives!! and my self and dr agreed to cancel the x-ray as he started moving his hand. Very nice!!!

Well after 2 weeks we got the insurance bill asking us to pay $150 as deductible and categorized as “surgery”. I got really mad at the medical system and called urgent care and she told me that it is considered as “procedure”. So I said, what is the gurantee that it was an “nursemaid” elbow in first place. There is no x-ray proof that some thing dislocated. As it is most common in kids, why cant this be treated like “viral fever” or “common/severe cough cold” kind of thing and billed as a doctor office visit.
Anyways, I am thinking of not to pay the bill unless they change the billing category. Lets see how it goes! After all its bad economy!!! who cares!! urgent care!!!
Btw, my brother (Cardiologist) and sis-in-law (Gynic) are both doctors!!

By: SM

SM — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:26:00 +0000

Hear my daughter’s saga…
My 2 year old daughter had elbow dislocation on a saturday afternoon and had to be taken to a urgent care facility. The urgent care was packed and it took close to 1 hr to see the doctor. This doctor(not a pediatrician) was clueless on how to fix the issue. She tried 2 times before asking us to get an x-ray and 2 times after seeing nothing wrong with x-ray. After 4 unsuccessful tries, she sent us home with a splint on my daughters arm and asking us to take her to regular pediatrician on monday morning and asked us to give motrin every 4 hrs. By the time we had x-rays and second visit with same doctor done it was 5 hours of wait with no resolution to this issue….
We had two days and 2nights of agony to me, my wife and ofcourse my daugher who could not sleep entire night.
On monday morning we had to fight with the receptionist to see the regular pediatrician that same day. The pediatrian fixed the elbo in 5 minutes after seeing my daughter and in 15-20 minutes my daughter was able to lift her hand and take her lollipop from the doctor. We were so relived and at the same time so pissed at the doctor from urgent care for not knowing how to perform this simple procedure…
It ended good so we thought untill we saw the medical bill for two days of treatment.
They billeded close to $1700 for unsuccessful treatment on saturday and $1000 for the treatment on monday…
I was sucessfull in getting the $1700 waived after talking to the medical director of the institute who was kind enough to intervine and resolve the misdiagnosis issue.
I am still disputing the $1000 charge for the monday’s service after all we had to go through..

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:53:18 +0000

My 18 month old had this two weeks ago and we only stayed in the doctor’s office for about five minutes. The bill was $521 for “OP MISC. SERVICES”. I called the insurance and they were very impatient (the insurance did not have to pay anything because of my deductible) about my inquiry of what code used.

By: Dossy Shiobara

Dossy Shiobara — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:58:14 +0000

myrrh: OUCH! Wow, $1,500+ is sheer robbery. Good luck disputing this – it’s criminal how healthcare providers can get away with this.