If your medical bills are overwhelming you consider hiring a medical bill attorney. A medical bill advocate helps you navigate through the process and in many instances help to get your overall costs reduced. This is because the attorney goes through each of your charges, compares them to your outlined coverages and then spends the time discussing these charges with your insurance company.
Often you are being charged for services you did not receive or those services that should have been covered. Medical bills and medical coding are difficult to interpret and an attorney specializing in medical advocacy helps you understand the charges.
More to the point the attorney double checks all the charges to make sure you have not been charged, or overcharged, for something in error. The medical advocate also works with the medical billing department or your doctor to come up with medical debt relief plans that work within your budget.
Who needs a medical advocate?
Consider seeking the services of a medical advocate if your medical bills are unusually high, you have multiple bills from multiple healthcare facilities, doctors or providers, or you have a long term or chronic illness and the bills are only going to continue to come. Others seek out the assistance of a medical advocate when they have unsuccessfully attempted to contest medical charges with their provider and have had claims denied.
When you work with a medical billing advocate expect to pay an hourly fee of around $125. This may be in addition to a monthly fee that includes a percentage of the costs they assist you in recovering. It is always best to ask about how your medical advocate charges and the fees involved in enlisting their services ahead of time.
Locate a good medical billing advocate by looking them up through the non-profit organization Alliance of Claims Assistance Professionals, or the Medical Billing Advocates of America.
