re: Medical Billing has gone mad

Bumping this to complain about recent medical situation/bill from LCMC for a 4 day hospital stay for my 2 week old who had RSV. We go to pediatrician at ochsner (we have the BCBS Blue Connect insurance plan) and they check her O2 levels and tell us she needs to be rushed into the ER. We get over to ER and are turned away because of capacity issues and are put in an ambulance to Children’s hospital instead.

Of course I’m worried sick about my 2-week old daughter but then also worried about the bill since we are out of network aside from ochsner facilities - but I’m told “don’t worry it’s ER so it will be handled as in-network even if you get admitted.”

Long story short, get to ER, they get my daughter stabilized, get admitted on Thursday, I guess the entire doc team checks out and takes the weekend off so we receive very little care or direction from anyone there and just sit in a room for 3 days wondering what the hell is going on and what the plan is. I asked for someone to speak to about what to expect billing-wise and was told that that department only takes phone calls and is unavailable on the weekend. Finally on day 4 a doctor shows back up and says we can go home.

Get home and receive a nice $9,000 bill. BCBS says “providers are considered in-network if admitted via ER, but facility charges, laboratory, etc are out-of-network.” Call LCMC to complain about being ghosted for 3 days and stretching our stay unnecessarily and they offer to set up a payment plan.