A Milwaukee man can finally sleep at night after a 10-month battle with a hospital billing error that left him facing a $30,948 bill for emergency eye surgery.

Milwaukee

A Milwaukee man, John Blascheck, faced a $30,948 bill following emergency eye surgery after a hospital billing error left his insurance unapplied. Despite his surgeon being in-network, the facility was not, leading to the bill being sent to collections. After nearly ten months of calls and emails, and with the help of local media, the healthcare provider Aurora pulled the account from collections and began working to resolve the issue with the insurer. While Blascheck expressed relief, he remains concerned about insurance coverage gaps for emergency procedures at out-of-network facilities, a situation that could affect other patients. Aurora acknowledged the error and stated they strive to uphold high standards, but occasionally fall short.

Milwaukee man fights $30K emergency surgery bill

Well, Milwaukee man says he is losing sleep at night after nearly 10 months of fighting a hospital bill error. So he emailed us here at TMJ four news. Yeah. And that bill stems from an emergency eye surgery in september of last year. I could really use your assistance. That's how john Blas check began his email to me and that called my attention. But so did the amount that was overdue. It is $30,948.5. Wow. That is the total john Blas check is left staring at. All of a sudden he realized that I could barely see out of the right eye after emergency retinal surgery in september of 2024. A surgery john tried to postpone. They said, well you do realize that if you do this, you know, you may lose your sight in that eye permanently. John knew he couldn't afford the surgery without his insurance being applied. What do I do? His surgeon was considered in network, but the facility where the surgery is performed is not. I had been on the phone with anthem even up until the time I had to leave to go to the hospital saying, hey, what else can be done? John says he tried for days to find a local provider and facility that were both in network and even attempted to get an out of network referral. As I'm laying on the bed in the waiting area for the surgery, I said, you know, I still haven't received pre certification approval for this. And both the nurse and the doctor said, well, we recommend that you have it and that we can always fix it on the back end. And I'm like, okay, cool. Now, nearly 10 months later, john says he's made dozens of phone calls and sent repeated emails, but insurance still has not been applied to his $30,000 bill and Aurora Healthcare sent it to collections. I'd rather go blind in that eye. You said you'd rather go blind in that I then go through all of this again. Correct. Wow. I wake up in the middle of the night so upset with an upset stomach that I can't get back to bed because I'm worried about paying this $30,948.5. That changed after I flagged john's billing issue for Aurora. Hello, this again. Hey john, how are you? They pulled my account from collections. They will zero it out on my end as far as they are taking over any kind of effort to collect from anthem. John says he's left with mixed feelings. Um, it's relief relief and a lingering concern about a potential coverage gap. If no in network facility exists to perform an emergency procedure, this doesn't solve it for all these other, you know, patients that are probably experiencing the same thing, but just don't have the tenacity to continue fighting for themselves. And we want to show you the statement Aurora provided to TMJ four after john gave the health care system permission to discuss his billing details. Here's what they had to say. Once we identify the billing error, we worked promptly to resolve the issue. We always strive to uphold the highest standards, but from time to time we fall short. We sincerely regret the stress and frustration this situation has caused. And so I also asked Aurora and anthem about john's concern that this scenario could potentially continue to repeat and I'm still waiting for a response on that. But I've been texting a little bit with john here and he was able to say he could finally smile again. It feels like a weight lifted off his shoulders and he said, I just almost can't believe that this has been taken care of. Yeah, I'm sure it is such a relief for him to have this done and taken care of. But it goes to show this, you know, this could potentially happen to anyone. So always double check your health bill billing statements from those medical companies and and also like you mentioned, you know, it happens to people who maybe don't have the tenacity to define so good for him for fighting for this and for reaching out to you and for you to help him solve this issue. Yeah, a lot of credit to him because he has spent months working to try and resolve this. And so if you have a similar issue, please reach out to me, send me an email and read out elvers at team g four dot com.

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