Hospital Charges in San Jose
Update #1
Jed
Margolin
Shortly after I posted the article in August
2004 the Daughters of Charity put two collection agencies to work, both trying
to collect for the same account at the same time.
This may have been payback for my having
filed a complaint against O'Connor Hospital with the California Department of
Health Services (DHS). DHS conducted an investigation and determined that
O'Connor had not done anything wrong. However, they refused to give me a copy
of the report. They wouldn't even let me come in and read it. They said the
only way for me to get the report would be to have an attorney subpoena it.
I sent the first collection agency a copy of
the article. (They didn't know how to use the Internet so I had to fax it to
them.) I told the second collection agency that they had violated the law and
to just go away.
Later, in August, I turned the Daughters of
Charity in to the IRS. The IRS said they would do an investigation but that
unless they took action the results of the investigation would never be made
public. However, since the Daughters of Charity get their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt
status through the Conference of Catholic Bishops I don't expect the IRS will
take any action against them. It would mean taking on the Church, and they will
never do that. (The Conference of Catholic Bishops does not appear to have any
direct authority over the Daughters of Charity, they just allow the Daughters
to use the Bishops' tax-exempt status.)
By then the Daughter of Charity had found
out about the article, presumably from the collection agency. I found accesses
by dochs.org in my server logs for August 26 and August 31. In addition to the
article they were interested in my patents as well as "Gas Music From
Jupiter." (And some of their machines were running MSIE 5.5 which is
extremely unsecure and cannot be made secure.)
A few days later I received a message from
Jason Hansen who said he was with O'Connor Hospital and wanted to talk to me.
It turned out he was really with the Daughters of Charity Central Business
Services. (These people can't seem to keep themselves from lying even when it
isn't necessary.) Here is an mp3 (488 KBytes) of the
message he left on my answering machine. I hadn't planned on posting it, but in
view of later events you will understand why I am doing it. Note that not only
did he mispronounce my name, it appears that he mispronounced his own. It
really sounds like he is saying his name is "Hansel", not
"Hansen."
Hansen gave me the good news that the
Daughters of Charity had a new policy for Self-Pay customers whereby we would
be charged according to some formula, and that, according to this new formula
my bill had been reduced to slightly less than my last non-zero dollar offer
(My last offer was for $0.00 and not suing them.)
I asked if this new policy had been made
public, and he said no.
I told him that I was inclined to pay it if
they made the policy public.
He said it wasn't his decision to make and
he would pass it up to his superiors and get back to me.
During the conversation I told him that
according to my server logs some of their computers were still using MSIE 5.5
and that its continued use was a serious security risk, and to tell their sys
admin to fix it. It is possible that a hacker could use an MSIE 5.5 hole to get
into their system and get into people's medical records.
In September, a collection agency for the
three Emergency Room physicians came after me. I told them to read the article
on my web site and tell the physicians that if they didn't go away I would put
their real names in the article, so that anyone doing a Google search for them
would be directed to the article. I haven't heard from them lately.
In late September my medical condition deteriorated
and in early October I had prostate surgery. I did NOT have it done at O'Connor
Hospital. (Big Surprise)
When I was feeling better a few weeks later
I called Hansen to find out what the status of the policy was.
He didn't like the idea that I was trying to
force them to make their new policy public and he became angry and abusive.
Perhaps he was suffering from testosterone poisoning and wanted to show that
his dick was bigger than mine. (At that point after my prostate surgery it
probably was.)
I then informed him that, since they had
violated the terms of their tax-exempt status through their membership in the
California Healthcare Association (which sponsors a Political Action
Committee), I would go after their tax-exempt bonds.
That enraged him even more.
I called Ms. S. at O'Connor Hospital (who
was a lot saner) and, afterward, I decided that if I went after their bonds
while I still owed them money they would claim I was doing it to get out of
paying them.
So, in order to go after their bonds with
clean hands, I paid them the full amount they said they would take to settle
all the accounts. They got substantially less than they originally billed me
for (I think it was for $4,500). They got less than my first offer ($2,000), or
my second offer ($1900), or my third offer ($1600). My last offer was for
$0.00. They got more than that, about what they would have gotten from an
insurance company.
Now I am going after their bonds.
Jed Margolin
San
Jose, CA
December 23, 2004
Hospital
Charges in San Jose
Update #2 - The Empire Strikes Back
Jed
Margolin
I got a call today from CBSJ Financial. As
soon as I picked up the phone they hung up on me. I knew it was CBSJ Financial
because their name and number showed up on my Caller ID.
I called them back to ask them why they were
calling me.
Raymond said it was to collect on a debt.
I asked, "Who For?"
He said, 'The Daughters of Charity."
By then it was 4 pm. Jason Hansen was not
answering his phone; neither was Ms. S. at O'Connor. The highest ranking person
the operator could find who was still there was the Head Nurse. (I guess she's
the nurse in charge of heads.)
Naturally, she couldn't help me.
These people are beginning to irritate me.
Jed Margolin
San
Jose, CA
December 23, 2004
Hospital Charges in San Jose
Update #3
Jed
Margolin
In February 2005 I contacted Mike Lapierre,
who is the Program Director at CSCDA who oversees their bonds (www.cacommunities.com/contact.html)
and gave him the information about O'Connor Hospital.
A few weeks later I received an email from
Mr. Lapierre:
Jed,
I received and reviewed your e-mail dated
2/13/05 regarding the Daughters of
Charity. Please be advised that before
any CSCDA bonds are issued, CSCDA
reviews community benefit information and
requires delivery of up-to-date
certifications and legal opinions regarding a
borrower's compliance with
California law and its 501(c)(3) designation.
We have passed along your e-mail and
attached details to Daughters of
Charity representatives and their legal
counsel. No additional bonds will
be issued unless we receive the required
opinions and certifications
referenced above.
CSCDA has no membership connection or other
role with regard to OSHPD, HCNCC
or CHA, so we cannot direct you with respect to
the activities of any of
those organizations.
-Mike
I expect this is like closing the barn door
after the horse has run off.
The Daughters of Charity has probably
already gotten all of their authorized bonds placed and, with interest rates
rising, they are unlikely to want to refinance anytime soon.
Still, if they ever want more bonds ...
In other news, the IRS has visited my web
site and viewed the article.
Even better, Diagnostic Imaging
Magazine mentioned my article Hospital Charges in San Jose in
their article Hospital Prices Crawl out of the Dark Ages.
They said:
And you should worry not
only about what official sites say about you but also about what your patients
say. Disgruntled patients have access to all your current and potential
customers through the Internet. Bloggers are taking their grievances public,
and people are reading their complaints. Check out www.jmargolin.com/
med/charges1.htm to see the level of sophistication among patients unhappy with
their care
Coming as it does as a
warning to their readers this belongs in the category of damning with faint
praise but it explains the large increase in people reading my article. Thank
you, Diagnostic Imaging, for promoting my article, but please note that I am
not a Blogger and that my article is not a Blog. It is an Article, just like
all the articles that you publish.
You can see their full article by going to http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/articles/hospital-prices-crawl-out-their-dark-crypts. It is under Perturbations: Hospital Prices
Crawl out of the Dark Ages. If it has moved again I have mirrored
it here.
And, finally, I contacted O'Connor Hospital
in early May to see if they had ever actually come out with their new policy
about charging people without insurance. The person I spoke to promised to look
into it and call me back in a few days. I am still waiting.
Even if they do have a new policy and give
people without insurance a discount I would have to suspect that it is a scam
based on the following comparison of rates currently charged by three hospitals
in San Jose for Procedure Code 99284, which is only one of many charges you
might see on your bill if you have the misfortune to require emergency
treatment.
Procedure
Code:
99284
Description
ER LEVEL V
O'Connor
Hospital
$1,945.00
Valley Medical Center
(County)
$1,100.00
Regional Medical Center of San
Jose $1,076.00
(Full price. They give a 50% discount if you pay at the time of service)
MEDICARE
reimbursement
$ 118.54 (no, I did not misplace a decimal point)
O'Connor charges almost twice as much as
anyone else, so a discount would be like a merchant doubling prices before
starting a Big 50% Off Sale.
Jed Margolin
San
Jose, CA
May 22, 2005
Hospital Charges in San Jose
Update #4 – The Doctors
Jed
Margolin
I recently went through the aggravation
required to get a free copy of my credit report from the various
credit-reporting companies. (They are required to give you a free copy but they
are not required to make it easy.)
The reason I went through this is because my
personal information was on the computers stolen from the San Jose Medical
Group in March (2004). A week later computer tapes were stolen from Time Warner
containing employee information going back long enough to include me. (Atari
was once a subsidiary of Warner Communications which is the Warner part of Time
Warner.)
When I received my credit reports I noted
the entries from my current and past credit card companies. I also noticed
numerous inquiries from credit card and mortgage companies that I have never
done business with.
There was at least one item that really
caught my attention.
Remember Dr. X, Dr. Y, and Dr. Z involved in
my Emergency Room visits to O’Connor Hospital? If not, my experience is
detailed in Hospital Charges in San Jose.
When I started getting bills from Emergency
Physicians Associates I attempted to negotiate with the doctors but was
unsuccessful. Although the address on their bills is in Woodland Hills, CA,
when I recently called their number 1-888-620-3100 the phone was answered with
"Thank you for calling Emergency Physicians Associates, at O'Connor
Hospital."
When their collection agency got especially
aggressive in September 2004 my medical conditions had worsened and I was in no
mood for more crap from collection agencies. I had posted my article about
O'Connor hospital a few weeks earlier where I had deliberately refrained from
naming the doctors. I faxed a copy of the article to the collection agency
because they claimed they did not have Internet access and told them bluntly to
inform the doctors that if they didn't stop bothering me I would name them.
The collection agency is CMRE Financial
Services in Brea, CA (www.cmrefsi.com
- warning, this web site tends to crash my browsers). They list their phone
number as 800-783-9118 and their email address as customerservice@cmrefsi.com
They stopped bothering me so I thought we
had a deal.
We didn't.
According to the credit reporting company, the
doctors sold their accounts (three, one for each doctor) to CMRE and CMRE filed
three deadbeat reports (or whatever they are called) to the credit reporting
company who dutifully put it on the credit report.
CMRE filed the deadbeat reports in June 2004.
When I talked to CMRE in September in a final attempt to negotiate, they had
already filed the deadbeat reports.
And so, here we are.
I understand that the decision of the
doctors to sell the accounts to CMRE has no bearing on their medical competence,
although in light of the Hippocratic Oath that many doctors still take I'm not
completely sure. Here is the modern version of
the Hippocratic Oath that many doctors still take when they graduate from
medical school. Here is the original,
translated from the Greek. If you read Greek I think the original
might be somewhere on this
page.
In any event, what the doctors did was a
business decision.
So, in that same spirit, and from learning
the business lessons they taught me, I am making my own business decision.
Dr. X is Dr. Dennis Belom.
Dr. Y is Dr. Gregory Groetsema.
Dr. Z is Dr. Joan Gates.
According to O'Connor Hospital's web site
they are still there. Here is the list
of Physicians and what they say about the good doctors.
|
Dennis Belom M.D.
Specialty: Emergency
Medicine
Medical School: Univ. of Illinois
Board Certification: Emergency Med
Gender: Male
Fax: (408) 947-2974
Status:Active
|
2105 Forest Ave.
San Jose, CA 95128
(408) 947-2666
|
|
Gregory Groetsema M.D.
Specialty: Emergency
Medicine
Medical School: Chicago Medical Scho
Gender: Male
Fax: (408) 947-2974
Status:Active
|
2105 Forest Ave.
San Jose CA 95128
(408) 947-2666
ggroetsema@usa.com
|
|
Joan Gates M.D.
Specialty: Emergency
Medicine
Medical School: Univ. of Texas - San
Board Certification: Emergency Med
Gender: Female
Fax: (408) 947-2974
Status:Active
|
2105 Forest Ave
San Jose CA 95128
(408) 947-2666
Bovie@aol.com
|
If you want to find out more about any
physician you can go to the AMA's web site and just look them up on their
Physician Finder (http://dbapps.ama-assn.org/aps/amahg.htm)
And, finally, I went to my new doctor last
week.
She said I needed an operation.
I said, "Doctor, I'd like a second
opinion."
She said, "And you're ugly, too."
{Badump-bump}
Jed Margolin
San
Jose, CA
June 20, 2005
February 7, 2007
I am still alive, more or less, and have
found some things that may be useful.
According to their 2003-2004
Annual Report the Daughters of Charity Health System (California) has a discount policy for the
uninsured.
You probably have to ask for it.
And, according to: http://www.hospitalvictims.com/hv_about1.asp
:
"Important Precedent.
The Daughters of Charity Catholic Hospital chain in
California has adopted a policy giving discounts to all
uninsured who have
income at or below 400% of poverty. The
uninsured with income above 400% of
poverty are given a price equal to what Managed
care would pay. We have on
this website a copy of the Daughters of
Charity policy."
If the link to the policy
stops working I have mirrored it here.
If you have experience with the DOCHS
policy, let me know.
Jed Margolin
Reno, NV