re: Why do hospitals have their people send separate bills?

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Why are they all separate? Why not just one itemized bill? 

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One bill would require all these individuals to submit their billing and receive their reimbursement through the hospital. That is not the way it works-many physicians are self employed or employed by a group that handles their billing. Not sure how to explain it other than "that's the way it is." It would definitely require vast increase in hospital billing staff and further increase overhead. It's also sort of preference. I bill for my services to you rather than having an uninvolved middle man do it based off what I tell them to do. And if I work multiple places, I don't have multiple middle men with different standards.

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it seems to me that it would be far easier to just have the hospital do it. After all, that is the only place I was the entire time. 

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Here's the thing- if they bill you separately,I can all but guarantee you they work some place other than the hospital. So to bill for outpatient services through their clinic, they already have a billing department because they need one. This way, they don't have to be burdened with the salary of the billing department at each facility where they bill, they just use their own ( or even their self).

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Imagine if hotels did this: one bill from the front desk staff, one from the cleaning crew, one from the hotel owners, one from the pillow unit.... it would be crazy... yet with hospitals we just take it as normal.

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While this is partially accurate, as above, these folks aren't providing high-value, high-dollar services with high regulatory burden at multiple locations. Perhaps you suggest that these groups only get paid through the hospital. This is actually somewhat the idea behind the "bundle payment" system that is being put into place by CMS. There are potential downfalls-namely a greedy hospital that forces out quality providers for budget-friendly poorly qualified folks.


The medical system is absurd. There are lots of things that are terrible about it. But the longer I work in it, the more I realize most of the solutions are worse.