"Western Medical System"
Patient Financial Services
Re:
Statement 0f0g9h5i9
Patient Number 0a6b7c7d3e
Adm. Date 08/06/97
Sirs or Madams:
Your statement dated July 03, 1998 got postmetered on the front from the 30093 zipcode July 13, 1998, metered once again in Atlanta, Georgia on the back on July 14, 1998 and arrived here July 17, 1998. There was reference to an "internal audit team". Whereupon, that same day, since there was a phone number of 410-358-6900 mentioned a couple of times and the expression "Patient Representative" was mentioned on the lower portion, I called the number to find it was a completely automated system so I picked "3" taking it up on the offer to send me a bill, invoice or printout that was remotely itemized.
Days passed and the incident was all but forgotten, the "audit" letter buried perhaps never to be found again.
On July 23, 1998, I received a printout apparently done on a daisy wheel printer in Courier 10 typeface (no letterhead or graphic and on plain paper) using the UMHS corporate name spelled out at the top in Courier purportedly from an address "351 Camden Street". The codes used under "Description of Service" were so abstruse as to be meaningless. The prices in the right column were so inflated as to be incredulous. The "Service Date" of 08/30/97 (I checked my calendar) was impossible: I never went south of Franklin Street on that date. I asked an informed friend where is Camden Street and he said "way far enough from University of Maryland". There was no telephone number anywhere on the printout. There was no self- addressed envelope. The paper was folded in such a way that it could not have been done by a machine but only by a mostly inept human. By the time of 08/30/97, I had been enrolled and a participant in the "Compassionate Care" program at the 701 Pratt Street building, Second Floor for over three weeks. The statement (aka "bill") turned up mysteriously and out of nowhere in my mailbox after a stretch of over eleven months.
Since there were so many doubts and questions between these two mailings, particularly the second one, my suspicions were aroused. In fact, I myself was inspired to even develop a scheme to establish a fake mailing address, commandeer the UMHS tradename and issue similar "statements" and send them to every healthcare purveyor in the 212xx zipcodes to see what checks and other emoluments would turn up at the other end. To make sure I would never be caught, I would use the Internet and have a "friend" print out hard copies and meter them from a location in the Midwest yet to be established.
For those reasons, when I called about this one, I didn't call Billing -- I called Security. I explained that it was quite possible someone is using UMHS computer data to generate false invoices and inducing people to send checks and other payments to a fake address. I explained I was a patient at Pratt Street, and he countered by asking which building on Pratt Street (there are apparently a few of them). I answered something like 700 but I wasn't sure. The man was very nice and explained that "351 Camden Street" did exist and despite being termed "Warehouse" was in fact a UMHS office building. That last statement did allay many of my suspicions. He gave me another, different "Patient Representative" number but it was busy a lot (the Security supervisor had somehow given me an eight-digit local phone number vs. the traditional seven-digit type) so I decided to write this letter you see here.
I hope, by this letter, I have given you at least $304-worth of consulting services for your billing operations because I am in no position to pay it, my insurance only covers Major Medical (e.g., a partial payment toward a weekend in Shock Trauma), and besides, please notice there is a difference between the abbreviations "Rx" and "Tx" when you send things to former UMHS medical secretaries -- your grossly excessive charges tend to lose credulity.
Thank you for your attention to this letter.
Sincerely,
Nancy Moran
nm
enclosure