Let’s face it, nobody really enjoys dealing with (and paying for) their medical bills. But everyone wants to know the same things: “did I receive and send all of the correct forms, and did I pay too much?” In addition they might think to themselves “could this be made easier, and could I be paying less?” As we have been working on the development of MedBillManager, a tool to manage medical expenses, these questions have been constantly in our minds.
In dealing with medical bills, people’s attitudes can be generalized into three stereotypes: the obsessively organized, the apathetic, and the occasional enthusiast.
The obsessively organized person is likely to organize, file, and store every scrap of paper that comes in the mail and is related to his or her medical treatments. In addition, such people most likely spend much more time scrutinizing their bills and EOBs before making payments, and have surely spotted their fair share of errors that others would have missed.
The apathetic person has resigned him or herself to the fate of not understanding everything that comes in the mail related to medical expenses. A piece of paper comes to such people, it tells them to pay someone something, and they do it. End of story. When an EOB shows up, they might take a brief look at it, but it most likely doesn’t take long to move from their hand to the trash (or an unorganized drawer of papers).
The occasional enthusiast is a bit of an odd case. This person has usually been either thrust into a round of serious medical treatments or has come across some sort of glaring error in a bill or EOB. For a while, this person will scrutinize and organize his or her medical documents almost as closely as the obsessively organized. Yet for such people the fervor soon dies out when their life returns to normal, or they decide there simply isn’t enough time to deal with all of the paperwork.
None of these three types of people is able to most effectively deal with their medical expenses. The obsessively organized spends entirely too much time handling all of the various documents received, time that could be much better spent elsewhere. The apathetic individual has most likely been mis-charged or mis-reimbursed a number of times, and this will continue to happen. The occasional enthusiast wastes too much time when the original fervor kicks in, and then as it wanes is most likely to get the same incorrect charges or reimbursements as does the apathetic individual.
So what are the options? First of all you could outsource your medical bill management to a review service. Although such services are surely made up of individuals skilled in dealing with medical bills, it is quite costly and involves giving control of your documents to another individual. Some people may not want the details of their medical treatments revealed to anyone but themselves and their providers.
The other option that is emerging is the ability to use your PC and/or the Internet to make managing your medical bills easier and less time consuming. While of course MedBillManager is one such option, Revolution Health also provides such tools, as do a few others. And these options, we believe, provide a path to a future that empowers individuals to effectively and painlessly manage their medical bills.
Let it be said that no service is perfect yet, and probably never will be. But the progress being made is exciting. One thing we believe is most appealing about MedBillManager is the ability to compare your costs rather than just manage them. Combining such comparisons with strong management and organization tools will hopefully provide a satisfactory answer to all of the questions mentioned at the beginning of this post, the questions that really matter to health care consumers.