Lower Medical Bills Blog
Free Tips and Guide to lower your Medical Bills

Whether you are seen in the Emergency Room or are admitted to the hospital, all items on your medical bill come from a doctor’s order. If you get an IV it is because the physician wrote the order, x-ray, labs, any medications, splints, crutches, dressings are all the same thing.

Of course in the real world things are much more complicated, but for now it is a good place to start. Later on I will give examples of what supplies Medicare will allow and what Medicare will not allow.

Back to the example, once a physician writes the order it is placed in the computer. If a lab test was ordered it will specify what kind of test and maybe even if the venipuncture is to be done by the phlebotomist or a nurse.

Likewise, if an x-ray was ordered it is entered into the computer. On the computer screen it will specify if it is to be a portable x-ray or not, and what body part is to be x-rayed.

From personal experience I can tell you that personnel from both radiology and lab will ask “is the order in the computer”? And rightly so, the radiology technician and all the lab personnel want to be paid. The order that was generated by the computer entry will be billed to the patient to pay for the service performed.

By the way, nursing services are included in the cost of the room or as part of the ED visit. Nursing services by and large are not billed separately. Nor can we take tips, although I have been offered one more than once.

Anyway, that pretty much describes billing for service, no matter if the service is a lab test, x-rays, dietary, respiratory treatments, physical therapy, or occupational therapy. Even consultations for another physician’s opinion, such as a surgeon or gastroenterologist are put into the computer.

But for supplies it is a different matter. I have seen supplies charged out using little stickers on the item that are placed onto “charge cards”. And I have seen a bar code reader that scans the item for the appropriate patient right in the supply room.

In that way the patient is billed for the item used. Also it gives the hospital some means of inventory control, how much of what item was used.

Now again this is simplistic and later on I will contradict myself when we discuss routine versus ancillary services. But for this most basic approach that is how the patient is billed.

It seems like a straight forward system. And it is, but as we continue our look at medical billing errors and overcharges you will see how this becomes incredibly complex.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under The Billing Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.