On my daughter's check-up, her weight had dipped a bit and it concerned our pediatrician. We told her that the dip was exaggerated as the weight prior to the dip was taken with her fully clothed and in a diaper (she was sick and was weighed differently than her normal weigh-ins are). The second weight check was after she was sick for a week and didn't eat well, as well as being entirely unclothed/no diaper. The whole thing caused the fluctuation in weight to be exaggerated.
Our pediatrician said she understood but just to bring our daughter to our other daughter's visit in two weeks just so they could check her weight. So, two weeks later we have our other daughter's check-up, bring both of our daughters and they quickly weigh our first daughter, see her weight is back up, and that's that.
Today we get a bill for $95, $45 of which we owe as a copay. They billed my daughter's weigh-in as an office visit that falls outside of her standard checkups.
Here is why I feel irked. I'm a 4th year medical student. My wife is a nurse practitioner. Neither of us were concerned about the weight, we explained the abnormal weight to our doctor, and we both have the capacity to weigh her at home and bring her in if we see something abnormal. I didn't need a $100 weight check, particularly when I currently live off of student loans. And not only that, it was sold to us as a "hey, just bring your daughter along for her sister's check-up and we'll weigh her" sort of thing, not that it would be her own visit.
I've worked with a lot of doctors on my rotations who do not bill out visits to people when the visit winds up being very simple, or for other extraneous reasons. I will be a physician in 8 months and I can genuinely say I would not bill someone who came by to hop on the scale. Hell, on my family med rotation, it was a near-daily occurrence to have people come back and recheck things like weight or BP if we were concerned, and it was never used as an attempt at extra billing. I already paid this bill, but it has left a sour taste in my mouth. Would you be okay with this? Do you think it's justified?
Submitted September 21, 2021 at 09:19AM by kubyx https://ift.tt/3Cu72DV
