ComplaintsforMercy Medical Center Merced

• Initial Complaint

  06/02/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Nature of the dispute: lack of communication from Mercy Medical Center and premature reporting to a debt collector. Mercy Medical was supposed to bill the cost of my routine health check-up to my health insurance Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, which during the times of service (see below) I was a covered dependent on my parent’s insurance (I was younger than 26; see attached documentation). Instead, this business (1) initially misfiled claims, (2) accepted impossible responses from Excellus, like that there was a lapse in coverage, and (3) did not reasonably keep me updated throughout my continued requests. It has taken dozens of calls to their customer service to try to find a solution, clearly to no avail, and without help from Mercy Medical to resolve this problem. This slow pace is also my extenuating circumstance for why I could not file a complaint within one year. The last time I called Mercy Medical I was informed the claim is being reprocessed and to ignore further bills in the mail. However, the next communication I received was from the debt collector Medicredit. Under legitimate concern of my credit score being negatively affected, I paid the entire amount to the Medicredit debt collector (see attached documentation). Regardless of whether the billing team at Mercy Medical failed to successfully submit my claims because of apathy or incompetence, the result was the same: unnecessary and significant financial hardship on me. The date of service of 8/26/2019 has an associated Mercy Medical billing ID of K*****949 The date of service of 8/28/2019 has an associated Mercy Medical billing ID of K44195914 Total paid (across the two dates of service): $1,766.78 Thank you for your time and attention on this issue, BBB. Sincerely, ***** *******

  Business response

  06/27/2022

  I want to thank you for your inquiry. Upon review of this account we have identified that the account was billed to the insurance company Blue Cross. A denial was received from Blue Cross due to the claim was billed with the Insurance Subscribers name vs the Patient's name. Once we corrected the information and sent the claim back to Blue Cross, the claim was considered untimely for payment. 
  To resolve this account appropriately, we have adjusted the account to 0.00 and will not be collecting from the patient. We will call the patient and inform them of the decision. 

  Customer response

  06/27/2022

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID 173***31, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.

  
  

  The Mercy Medical Center Merced business called me to apologize for their team's ineptitude. They also informed me that they'll mail a refund check to my address and can expect it within 1-2 weeks. Since I confirmed the amount owed and address on file, I'm comfortable with closing the complaint. Should no refund check arrive, I'll follow up with the business. If that fails, I'll resort to the BBB again with a new complaint. Hopefully the financial issue they caused does go away.

  
  

  Thank you very very much BBB for specifically helping with this matter and for generally providing accountability to businesses.

  
  

  Best,

  ***** *******

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩