So if you go to Urgent Care, expect a text the next day from a South Central Pennsylvania phone number, with a complicated url (80 characters, multiple subdomains) and a request for payment. Smells phishy.
But if you or your insurance (if you have it) have a discrepancy or even question about the bill, get ready to wait. Baptist Health South Florida’s own financial services department won’t have any info until the data reaches them weeks later.
The
AI billing system at Baptist is faster than a three minute visit and a
basic prescription. Faster than a doctor. Faster than a nurse. Maximum
operational efficiency at the expense of checks and balances.
Meanwhile, the ai countdown for you to pay has already started, as your health info zips across a worldwide web of non-Baptist companies you’ve never heard of, with servers who knows where, protected by who knows what.
Check the TOS
It’s all part of a vast, interconnected, highly task-distributed, and AI-driven revolution to medical billing and payments; a big part of Baptist’s very new digital initiatives; where tech companies that they "partner with" exert increasing influence on hospital business and records through opaque mechanisms you’re seemingly expected not to see, notice, or question.This review shares community perspectives on new medical billing technology.
Jungle Funk. Swamp Dick. Time plus sweat. Bacteria. The day after I left Baptist Urgent
Care for a potentially infected ingrown hair follicle at the base of the
underside of my schlong from riding bike everyday in the Florida heat,
sun, and rain, I got a text from an out of town
number saying they collect for Baptist with a link to send money.
What is this a shakedown?
 |
The bill was more than double what the lady at the front counter said. No testing, no blood work, no diagnostics, no results, no procedures, no sample, no doctor; just a basic three minute show-and-tell with a nurse practitioner who signed a prescription for a three dollar antibiotic against staph infection, which can be deadly, especially after storms.
I
don’t know if the spirit of the charter of Baptist Health South Florida
and its core values are aligned with maximizing profit through
over-billing for basic human health services. Did Ai choose the billing
code to maximize the fee by algorithm? Billing codes are as semantic as all language.
If you pay our friendly, local, faith-based, non-profit health network online, just know that Canada and Sweden are in on the action.
Allow me to explain.
Baptist Health South Florida uses a company called Waystar to track billing and payments, which is called “Revenue cycle management.”
Waystar is a publicly traded company as of June 7, 2024, with a majority of shares held by something called the EQT VIII Fund, based in Sweden; and The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which is Canada’s public retirements benefits program. Two socialist countries with free healthcare, if you’re counting, betting on the digital business of your wellness through Delaware LLC's contracted by a Florida non-profit. No taxes. Hilarious.
So-called “Vulture” firm Bain Capital created Waystar in a merger, which then acquired a company called HealthPay24 in a spending spree that included buying Digitize.ai for its pre-authorization technology.
In their SEC filing, Waystar reported a $51 million dollar net loss on $791 million dollars of revenue. They're less profitable than me. And I'm usually broke.
It’s clear that back-end digital logistics are socially revolutionizing healthcare, but glitches may leave end users in the lurch, and data security is a concern. Not to mention that Waystar's mission is to maximize revenue, as outlined in their 2020 case study on Baptist Health South Florida. Given two options for a billing description, won't they always pick the most expensive one?
The Baptist Charter reads "We are dedicated to patient privacy and the confidentiality of patient medical records." However, the last screen before online payment informs the end user that user data will not be private due to “Confidentiality and Security Limitations” of Health Pay 24.
I would've had to ignore the bill for almost a month for financial
services to even see it. I think you know where that road leads. Collections
So I called the Baptist Health South Florida Patient Experience voicemail and left a detailed message.
Then I wrote an email to the Patient Experience department.
Then I went into the Baptist Health Pine app (buggy, unstable, glitches). My account had no diagnostics, no tests, no procedures, no doctor's notes, no old charges. No itemization. No price per service. No service rendered. Nothing about a tier. Missing typical hallmarks of a basic business receipt or invoice. Just a more than double sized number from what the staff informed me the charge would be, preceded by a dollar sign.
If I was overcharged, I must object. Because I may not know much about this or that, but I read somewhere that King Solomon The Wise once said, “False Scales Are An Abomination”
Check your Proverbs 11:1
Here are some sources cited in this personal review:
https://www.waystar.com/news/w...
https://www.fiercehealthcare.c...
https://info.waystar.com/CT-CM...
I am waiting to hear back from Baptist Health South Florida on this matter and I am surely not the only individual affected or opinionated on certain questions raised.
Thankfully the medicine worked. I paid the bill and I am waiting to hear back about a partial refund.
