John Wauters
1/5
My wife became very sick suddenly late one evening when visiting the area. The UCHealth ER was the only open option otherwise we would have gone to an urgent care clinic. During the stay the staff were fairly kind and professional, however they were incredibly pushy after initial labs came back negative that she needed a CT with contrast. My father (a physician for the past 25+ years) felt this was unnecessary given the circumstances. We voiced this, but after much pressure and the medical staff insisting, we agreed. Their CT machine was down, and a mobile unit was outside, so they rolled my very sick wife into the below freezing air with a couple of blankets to do the scan. The scan did not give any results or indications to the cause of her condition.
Our insurance did not cover any fees/bills relating to the ER. After checking with a friend in billing at a hospital local to us, we found if the visit was local it would have costs around $3500-$4000, not including a 30% discount if paid in full. We were shocked when we received a nearly $7000 bill for the services. The addition of the CT scan bumped the visit to being coded as a "level 5" and jointly resulted in an approximately $3000 increase to our bill. Additionally, the documented reason for running the scan in her patient notes was not mentioned a single time during our visit.
After reviewing the itemized bill, we noticed that all of the items had pricing differences compared to the UCHealth pricing transparency page (every one of them in their favor). Some of these differences were for as much as $600. We were told essentially, that they were allowed to be wrong on this.
We continued to have issues with billing disputes, and even were promised a call back before the bill was posted as due on the account. That never happened, and the bill has been posted.
Long story short, unless you have awesome insurance that's in network with these folks, go somewhere else. Our experience and research showed that their pricing is higher than surrounding providers, their pricing transparency page is inaccurate, their billing disputes department communication is poor at best, and 9/10 phone calls that you make to them (billing coordinators, patient advocates, admin) will not be answered and you will have to leave a message.
