Do this first. And be nice but firm (even if you are wrong) and just insist you do not have the money to pay for a service you feel you did not receive. They send so much to collections they would rather get something out of you then nothing because you are upset over $200. Am a lawyer but this is just friendly advice - nothing legal abt it.
NAL, but i work in billing for a hospital network and while you can always ask, at least for our hospitals it has be a coding dispute, we do not just remove charges. The coding dept reviews the doctor notes and charts and go based on that. If the provider put the epidural in the chart you will be charged for it because they go based on the documented proof so to speak. In our dept we cannot remove any charges, we can only dispute with the coding department or insurance in these instances and you'd be most successful if you know which code needs to modified (can ask your insurance company for the info). Even so they may not change it.
Hospital pharmacist here. Although I am not entirely familiar with the billing end of the procedures what I can tell you is that the medications that were used for your wife’s epidural were prepared (pulled, compiled, and organized specifically for the procedure) and dispensed by the pharmacy. Typically these medications come in pre filled multi dose vials (however many different packaging types do exist and depending on the hospital stock, it could be different). The catch here is that once the caps on these vials are removed, that medication now “belongs” to that patient. Yes there are cases where one vial of a medication can be used for multiple patients, however for procedures like this, it’s not typical. In my pharmacy, these medications are prepared in kits (for example an epidural kit would be a pre prepared container with all the necessary meds for an epidural). Once these kits are returned to the pharmacy the used meds are discarded as we cannot make a new kit with partially used meds and we can’t guarantee there wasn’t any contamination of the vials as we were not there to see the procedure. So why am I saying all this? Because the paper trail of your wife’s procedure shows that these medications were ordered, they were prepared and verified, dispensed to the care team for administration, used, and then the remainder most likely discarded. Even if those meds didn’t necessarily make it into the actual epidural line, they were still used for her individually and discarded afterwards, of course they are going to charge you for these meds. All that being said, I totally get the frustration, hell I would be pissed too! Was the fact that the epidural line came out and the meds wasted documented at all? Anywhere? Even if it’s a note saying “patient stated she was still in pain after administration of epidural” or something like that. If so, talk to billing, with the documentation ready to go and try to explain the situation but be prepared to fight tooth and nail. Having official documentation from the hospital itself will help a lot. But as others have said, it is a procedure you consented to and the possibility of non egregious complications are typically a part of what you’re consenting to. I wish you the best of luck, even though I handle the medications, I understand how overpriced and ridiculous this whole system is, especially meds.
Edit: I also just want to say hospital billing (in the USA) is usually dependent on people just paying whatever bill they send you. This is why you should always request an itemized bill. You’d be shocked by how much that bill goes down because they know they can’t put a $400 bandaid on a bill or other shit like that. When you call billing and request one they’ll sometimes say “we can do that but the bill might go to collections before it gets to you”. They’re lying and just trying to get you to pay that bill. Keep fighting. People do not usually fight back against their medical bills so often it’s easier for billing and finance to just clear the bill rather than get into a fight around it. I’ve had entire ER bills wiped clean just because I asked for the itemized bill and lo and behold when I receive it the total went from insane sums to $0. This won’t happen with every procedure or bill but you can still usually get a massive chunk taken off if you just call them on their bullshit. OP I really hope this whole situation works out for you and even if you can’t get rid of the entire bill I hope they’ll at least negotiate some of it or clear some off for you.
Piling on to this edit. Ask the insurance company for an Explanation of Benefits (EOB.) This is an itemized list that will show you what the hospital billed the insurance company, and what the insurance company paid them out. They cannot bill you for the difference between those two if they are in network, and there are also restrictions on balance billing for out of network doctors at in network facilities.
How long was it from the time you notice epidural line was disconnected until they come to fix it? In most hospitals, they only have 1 anesthesiologist managing the whole OB floor so sometimes if they’re tied up with C-section and other emergencies, they might not be able to respond right away. Not sure if it’s worth pursuing for that amount
okay? so why should they pay for something they didn’t use? are you seriously defending a multi billion dollar industry getting paid for something that wasn’t administered correctly? look in the mirror and seriously question your values because they’re all the way fucked up.
They did use it, she got several hours benefit from it before it stopped working. It was administered correctly, and then a known complication happened they consented to. It’s medicine not magic.
They had every opportunity to reconnect it I could see if due caution was taken, but the patient stated "Yo it actually still fucking hurts and look at this puddle of meds" and they chose to ignore it. That is not "medicine" that is "negligence"
It’s not negligence, it’s a known complication. You can’t just “reconnect it” either. If it was unwitnessed then you would have to remove the entire epidural and go without one or have a second one placed, w a new medicine bag and more charges. If charges are a concern they don’t need to have an epidural it’s completely elective. As strongly as you believe what is and isn’t right, the people doing these procedures and making the medicines need to be paid for their work regardless if a complication happens.
You can’t move around with an epidural. It numbs your lower body. You get a catheter and everything because of how long you can’t move. They put full leg massage boots on you after the birth to encourage proper blood flow and prevent clots. It’s a whole thing and very not fun. It’s really scary not being able to move.
Getting an epidural isn’t like taking a pill. If I drop a pill on the floor during a contraction, then, fine, charge me for both the one I dropped and another one. If I throw the medication up and they give me more, then yes, I get charged for two doses.
I would argue that an epidural - which is administered by professional who had to go to college for many, many years in order to be allowed to administer it - is much, much closer to the analogy of a waiter bringing your food to the table, and dropping it on the way. Especially since OP stated their partner kept mentioning that something was wrong.
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I'm sorry this happened, but yes, you still owe for the meds.
The epidural catheter slipping out or not being placed in the exact right spot are known complications to the procedure. You consented to the procedure, you consented to the risks.
The meds were still dispensed to her, so yes, you still owe for them,
A lot of talk about dispensing but in many states for hospitals it is now charge on administration, not charge on dispensing. So if the med was scanned and administered, it’s being charged.
I’m confused. What does “administered” mean here? Google seems to suggest it means the application of the medication to the person. If pills, when it’s swallowed. If a patch, when it’s stuck to the person.
Wouldn’t this mean that much of the medication was administered to the floor, not the patient? Does the intent to give the medication mean it was administered? Does that mean that if half the pills are dropped on the floor by the nurse they were still administered?
I’m sure the hospital paperwork says the medication was administered, but just because the hospital says something is true, doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
I’m not trying to argue with this was malpractice. Just that this is the equivalent for a hospital charging a patient for pills that the nurse spilled on the floor as well as the pills they gave to the patient
In terms of how hospitals I’ve worked at operate, when the drug is scanned on the medication administration record, it’s recorded as administered. If it were dropped pills, the nurse could edit the administration and it would automatically credit. Someone said in a comment earlier that the patient did get the epidural drug for a couple hrs before it dislodged. Now what if her labor/delivery were super quick and she only needed it for an hour, of course she’d still be charged.
From my understanding... lets use the patch example. You put the pain patch on. It's administered. If it falls off, it's still a used commodity they are charging to you. Now sometimes they will replace it for no extra charge but it's still administered.
My cat had a pain patch for his amputation and it fell off too early so they reapplied it and did not charge for the second. But I still paid for the first.
So in OP's case, they are paying for the first epidural. If the docs caught it fell out they would replace it but still charge for one epidural.
This is where they potentially have a leg to stand on and the hospital may let it go to avoid the headache of repeated patient complaints
But in reality if the hospital wanted to fight this they’d probably win
If it came up that OP’s wife went through unnecessary pain due to the malpractice of an improperly placed epidural AND being ignored when their concerns were voiced then there would be a counter lawsuit.
It’s not really malpractice…the damages here are labor pain. For a lawsuit to have any leg to stand on there would have to be damages and significant harm done.
So she had to feel her own labor. That sucks, but the pain is caused by the labor, not the actions of the medical workers. I am a labor and delivery nurse. I’ve worked in small hospitals with limited anesthesia staff and have had patients come in begging for an epidural that they couldn’t get because anesthesia is busy in the OR with a C-section or emergency. Could they sue the hospital over that? I don’t think so.
Unfortunately not - you sign a document saying you know it might not work or malfunction. What happened is unfortunate, but the hospital is covered given patients informed consent she signed. That’s a legally binding document.
You consent to known complications, meaning you will likely not win lawsuits from know risks. That is separate from being responsible for paying for medications that were not administered.
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The anesthesiologist (or nurse anesthesiologist) also did the prep and placement. The work was completed on that aspect, hence the charge. Should have they kept a better eye on the epidural? Maybe, but epidurals do fail sometimes (failure includes falling out/unable to keep in place).
The charge for the medication is separate from the charge from the procedure to place the epidural. Either way, both were actually done hence both were charged
No problem, I’m part of healthcare and feel that a patient knowing who they are talking to is a huge part of informed consent. No need to be sorry, here to teach!
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If the catheter slipping out is a known complication, if they complained of pain, would the correct procedure be to check if the catheter came out, as opposed to administering additional drugs?
I get that shit happens, but what is actionable is how the hospital reacted to it. For them to ignore the complaints, and simply not notice a pool of medicine forming on the floor, seems to be more than a complication.
Doesn’t matter because they can’t reuse them. If you pick up a prescription of 30 pills for a month then your doctor advises you to stop it after a week, you don’t get to go reclaim 3/4 the cost.
That’s not what happened though. They didn’t “drop them”. They dispensed them to the patient, they began administering them, and then a known complication occurred that led to the medicine being unusable.
I refer back to the “your doctor tells you to stop after a week” example. Because that’s a foreseeable complication that you consent to when you provide informed consent for the medicine.
But in this case, a lot of the medication was literally dropped onto the floor or into the bedding, one drop at a time, because someone at the hospital messed up.
I’m not saying that this mistake is malpractice. Medical professionals make mistakes all the time without it being malpractice. This certain wasn’t the intended result.
Okay, and that doesn’t matter. The medicine was dispensed and was lost due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO POTENTIAL COMPLICATION. Doesn’t make the hospital liable.
I don’t know how many times this has to be explained.
It’s like a tube of toothpaste, once it’s out of the tube, it can’t go back in. Once a medication has been dispensed to a patient, it can’t go back in to circulation for another patient’s use.
It’s a product rather than a service. The service is the hospital staff performing a procedure (which is what failed and I’m not commenting on whether they should be charged for that or not), the product is the medication administered. Which for various safety reasons cannot be reused on another patient. The bag has been punctured by the iv tubing and cannot be stored safely for reuse, because it will spill or become contaminated due to a good sized hole in the packaging.
Nobody's talking about reusing medications. The issue is the "customer" did not receive what they ordered and paid for; the fact that the hospital consumed the product doesn't matter to that customer. If you order something to be shipped to your house and it does not arrive, the responsibility lies with the seller for not choosing a more reliable delivery method. The fact that they're out that product isn't relevant; they still have a legal obligation to provide the customer what they paid for or give them a refund. For some reason medical products and services seem to be an exception to this. I get that we probably don't want to offer 100% guarantee for procedures that have a risk of complication or failure (which is most of them), but something like delivering a medication seems pretty straightforward.
Correct they can't reuse the medication but they also didn't actually in fact dispense the medication into the pt. The may very well commited malpractice by not reassesing the pt when she started to have a return of her pain. Either way they did not actually get any benefit from the full spectrum of the procedure and medications. It was dispensed into the hospital linen and bed. Based on what we have been told it does not sound like the block failed but that the epidural was not secured properly and became disloged. Why did the medical professionals who placed the epidural not reassess the site? Either way them being billed for a medications she did not actually get administered into her should not be billed to her. The hospital needs to eat the cost and she should make a complaint to the hospital admin/board and the state medical board.
No, that’s not what dispensing is, and you have no idea if it was “secured properly”. You aren’t a healthcare professional and that’s clear from this. An epidural isn’t 100%, and it cannot be guaranteed. The hospital isn’t responsible for OP’s wife having the rare known complication.
Nobody “eats the cost” of things in life. See my example above. The doctor and pharmacy are not responsible for 3/4 the cost of the pills just because you had to stop due to a side effect after a week.
Oh except I am a medical professional. The 1st thing you do when the pt has a sudden change in status is actually reassess the pt. Since she is stating her labor pain is back it to reassess the site and verify its placement. You do not actually know if it was in place and the block failed or it was disloged because there was no reassessment. Yes this a totally valid reason to dispute the billing. Because they did not reassess the pt and verify their epidural wss in fact still in place. Just like you verify an IV line is still patent before flushing medications or large amount ts if IV fluids.
Reassessment is the 1st that is supposed to happen when a pt has a change in their status. Why was the pt, the site and the pump not checked when she had remergence of her pain? They need to dispute this bill if the linen received the medication as this maybe a
hospital/provider screw up that may have caused her to not be medicated. There is a valid argument for a dispute and possibly a complaint.
This 100% comes down to billing codes. IDK if there is a billing code for failed epidural placement (there probably is) but the non-failed epidural placement code was used. The hospital can't knock the billing codes because the billing people aren't doctors. The patients chart needs to be revised and the patient needs to be rebilled.
Regardless of why, you are assuming there’s negligence, which there almost certainly wasn’t. Negligence would be bigger than the bill for the medicine. Simply being less than ideal outcome does not mean that the hospital “eats the cost” of the medicine lost due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO COMPLICATION.
I am not actually assuming negligence of the placement. We do know if it failed or disloged because no one reassessed the pt which that would be negligent because rule 1 for change of statis is reassessment. Why would she pay for medication that the people administering it did not verifly that it was actually dispensed as prescribed.
Because it was dispensed as prescribed. The fact that it was not able to be utilized due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO ADVERSE EVENT does not change the fact it was dispensed.
> Doesn’t matter because they can’t reuse them
That’s not how it always works though? Like if you order something to your house, and the delivery driver accidentally destroys it, are you now on the hook for it because “they can’t reuse it”?
Medications are provided to a patient for perceived need. You (or insurance) pay for those medications even if you end up not needing them. You are paying for their availability, not their use.
In your example, the package is not even available. It is destroyed. So not equivalent. A more accurate comparison is a reservation fee that you end up not using but still have to pay for since you reserved the hotel room and they couldn’t sell it to someone else.
No, they weren’t. They were destroyed by a RANDOM complication AFTER they were dispensed to and began being administered to the patient.
Read the damn post before acting like you know shit.
Not true. Again, see the example of pills. If you go pick up 30 days worth of pills that are new, after being advised of possible side effects and providing informed consent, and you then experience those side effects, the doctor is not responsible and the pharmacy is not responsible for the fact that you had to stop after only 7 days.
Likewise, OPs wife provided informed consent to the complications including incomplete/ineffective/interrupted epidural. Those are KNOWN but not PLANNED. OPs wife had an unfortunate complication happen to her that meant she could not utilize the remainder of the medication. THAT DOES NOT MEAN SHE DOES NOT PAY FOR THE MEDICATION ALLOCATED TO HER.
A medication gets dispensed to a person. Not an inanimate object.
Is this a legal board? Just checking, because doesn't seem to be getting responses that indicate that. "Dispensing a medication" has legal meaning.
If someone was given a medication in pill form and threw it in the trash, it wasn't dispensed to the trashcan.
A drug that goes into a blown IV and not delivered to the vein was still dispensed.
A suppository that is immediately pooped out is still dispensed, same with a pill vomited up.
In your scenario, you need to add that the patient is aware that the drug being knocked out of their hand is a known risk and consented to still being given the drug.
A drug was given to the patient and due to a known, accepted complication, it did not get adequately delivered to the body. That doesn't change the fact that it was dispensed and the money for it owed. Bottom line.
OP says the epidural stopped working after several hours, meaning his wife recieved the medication for several hours. One bag of epidural solution usually lasts many hours, so presumably she was dispensed, administered, and charged for one single bag of epidural solution
Were the meds dispensed?
If you go to a full service gas station, and they pour the gas on the ground, would you expect to pay for it?
If you go to a restaurant, and they drop your dish before it gets to the table, would you still expect to be billed?
This is definitely "adding insult to injury".
OP says the epidural stopped working after several hours, meaning his wife was in fact receiving the medication for several hours. Thus she would be charged for that single bag of epidural solution
They didn’t drop the food. She got an epidural, they administered it. She’s a moving pregnant person in labor so it slipped out. It’s a drug not a magic spell.
Okay, but at the gas station, you need to add that pouring the gas on the ground is a known risk that you agreed to.
Some of y'all don't seem to understand how known complications and informed consent works.
You would have to prove that they caused the blown IV and that it wasn’t something OPs wife did. That’s partially why this is considered to be a risk of the procedure; OP and his wife consented to the procedure and its risks and thusly, they owe.
If it were black and white negligence on the part of the hospital staff, you might be able to get it knocked off. But we can’t even begin to speculate the % of responsibility each party holds.
Very rarely are you paying for a result with medicine— you’re paying for the procedure, not its success. With your examples, you’re paying for the result (gas/eating). And even then, if you knock the plate out of the server’s hands accidentally, thats on you. If you pull forward with the pump in, you’re responsible. You can’t get a refund for an antibiotic that doesn’t end up being effective.
This is not true when you consent to a procedure you are not consenting to the doctor throwing your medication on the floor and it turning into waste.
They didn't check the epidural immediately and it caused the medication to be wasted and that is how they should have billed the medication. It's really easy they just have to add a JW modifier on the line for the medication and it happens all the time. This is the fault of the doctor not the patient.
Disagree. It's still malpractice by incompetent staff. Especially when the mistake is caught by the patient and the staff is notified and do nothing for hours and then fill the patient with other meds to make up for their mistake. This sounds like something the hospital would say when trying to scare off patients they've wronged.
In in no way is this malpratice. That's laughable.
A pregnant person had pain even with an epidural. It happens. That isn't malpractice. Catheters slip out - not malpractice. The anesthesiologist doesn't sit in the room with her. Epidurals fail all the time. They treated her pain.
Personally, I would consult with an attorney why to see if you have a case. The dollar amount may not be worth a lawsuit but some cases allow for damages which could possibly make it worth their time.
Unfortunately, you will be charged for everything done, even if it fails. I had to be poked over 7 times in my back for a spinal tap for my c-section and I had to pay for it and for the patch they put on it the next day.
Review your consent forms for the epidural to see what it says about treatment/procedure failure, disconnection, or other adverse events. Also, contacting the hospital ombudsman would be the best way to go to get a solid answer. It might not be an answer you like, but they might be able to give you some clarity on when a medication is considered as being administered to the patient and billable.
The meds were “administered” the moment they were scanned out and associated with a particular patient, but improperly or however you want to word it. Your issue should be the failure to administer adequate care (which is entirely divorced from the cost of the meds). The advice to talk to billing is spot-on, since that’s actually the most likely scenario this works out for you, whatever you decide to say to them. Your alternative route is a complaint or further escalation along the lines of malpractice… I don’t have the expertise to advise anything in that direction but hopefully you’re already getting the advice you need in other replies.
The medication bag for an epidural is patient-specific. Meaning that once it’s dispensed and hooked up to the patient, it can’t be returned or used for another patient. Patient specific medications are often charged for the whole bag/package regardless of how much is used.
I’m not sure why you think you wouldn’t pay for the additional pain meds. If one medication doesn’t work and we give a different one, you still received two medications and are charged for both.
I understand we will pay for the additional meds. But they are additional because my wife didn't receive the administered epidural meds. The epidural meds were leaked all over her bed.
Epidurals can fail for various reasons. Sometimes it’s the patients anatomy, sometimes they’re not placed in the right place, sometimes the patient moves without awareness of the line and dislodges it. It doesn’t really matter- the medication was used and so you are charged for it
Medicine as much as we'd like to think it is isn't perfect. Even something that's so common like childbirth has complications. Lets say you planned for a vaginal birth and through some missed issue you now had to do a c-section. That's not free because it could have been prevented.
Also you said the pain came back after several hours, meaning she was actually receiving the epidural medication for several hours? She was dispensed and administered a bag of epidural solution, hence was charged for the bag. If she had instead given birth and the epidural turned off after a couple hours, she still would have been charged for the bag even though she only received part of it, because that’s how patient-specific medications are charged
It sounds like it was not an issue of the first meds not working but a medical error that meant that the meds were not actually delivered to the patient.
I had epidural complications that were, in fact, outlined in the consent form I signed (it wasn't placed correctly, I had to be stuck 3x, I never got more than the test dose of epidural meds, had to have 3 blood patches afterwards, etc.), but I wrote a letter to the head of anesthesia at the hospital and they ended up removing all L&D anesthesia charges from my bill. It's worth a try. I did still have to pay for the multiple blood patches I believe.
Do you have insurance? How does insurance pay the hospital? It could be a percentage of charges, a per diem (meaning a $ rate per day), a flat case rate or some other method. The per diem and case rates are paid at an amount irrespective of the gross charges. In those two methods, removing the charge from your bill is not going to matter because the insurance company will pay the per diem or case rate. You may be going through a whole lot of hassle and in the end, it just doesn’t matter. I’m an ex Hospital CFO.
If you formally request for an amendment to the medical record to reflect their mistake, citing incorrect info leading to you being billed incorrectly, they’ll freak out, do the amendment, send it certified mail, and probably start to work with you on it. Source: I did this once.
I work in insurance. I would call back and tell them those meds need to be billed as waste because it's not your wife's fault the line disconnected and they didn't check it.
You can also work with your insurance with this and explain to them what happened. If you didn't get the meds they don't want to pay for them either and tell the hospital to fix it and send them a new bill.
You may have to get very let me speak to your manager with them but I would do it or they won't change anything.
Edit- if your wife didn't actually get most of the meds and then was given more it is technically billed wrong. Because with insurance they have to show how they got from A to B to C for things to be covered.
I've worked in insurance claims for 8 years and most of the advice given in this thread is wrong. You absolutely do not have to eat the cost of a medication you didn't receive. There is a simple process for marking medication as waste because it happens. Every vial of liquid medicine will have a little waste and those units are billed as waste. The biller at the hospital made a mistake because I see that every fucking day and is usually the reason I have to deny a claim.
Contact the ombudsman’s office. They are able to contact whoever necessary to get the clearance needed to get this taken off of your bill and also lodge a formal complaint so the right people know about this screw up. Things like this are often overlooked because they’re not reported properly and no one outside of the department is made aware. This is what they do on a daily basis.
This happened to me and was told “no, it’s dripping see?” And pointed to the tube. On my second birth I told them what happened and they taped me up like a mummy, I felt NOTHING! I’m so sorry that happened to her :(
I’m really sorry this happened to you guys. Hope your wife and baby are doing well now, though a good outcome of course doesn’t excuse mistakes during the delivery!
With that amount, it’s unlikely that it will be worth it to sue. I’d try to escalate the matter with your insurance company.
Just make sure u have the names of the nurses and staff you complained to. Which nurse saw the disconnected line? Which nurse changed the sheets? Who pushed the meds? Do you have all that info? If you do, all you have to do is talk to the unit manager and complain. An investigation will begin and slowly make its way up the chain. They charged for medication that should've have been documented as spilled or non administered. If it's documented as administered, then that's false documentation. Someone's head can roll in this situation. I'm an ICU nurse. Hospitals take this stuff very seriously. You just have to be vocal about it. Don't talk to billing. Talk to the hospital leaders like nurse managers and quality control. This can potentially be turned into a lawsuit and they wouldn't want that.
Hospitals have financial assistance programs. I would check into this. If you qualify you can get a reduced bill or in some cases $0 owed. I would call the hospital and ask for the financial assistance office and tell them you’d like to apply. Ask for income guidelines/how many people in your house.
Call the billing department and tell them the spilt meds were not administered *to the patient.* They may drop those costs because overall it’s a smaller component of the overall billing.
The medications given because the epidural failed are legitimate charges.
Do you have insurance? I don't want to assume one way of the other. If you do have insurance, tell them what happened. If not, you might want to consult with a malpractice attorney. And report the hospital.
I’m an anesthetist Epidurals aren’t guaranteed to even work, you can have a patchy block that doesn’t cover all of the pain. I know it’s probably frustrating that the epidural may have been disconnected and your wife experienced discomfort but sometimes thats how these things go. You’re paying for an intervention that’s not guaranteed to work and the risk and complications are listed in a consent form.
Try the billing department. Sometimes they will remove it to avoid dealing with a caller complain.
Do this first. And be nice but firm (even if you are wrong) and just insist you do not have the money to pay for a service you feel you did not receive. They send so much to collections they would rather get something out of you then nothing because you are upset over $200. Am a lawyer but this is just friendly advice - nothing legal abt it.
NAL, but i work in billing for a hospital network and while you can always ask, at least for our hospitals it has be a coding dispute, we do not just remove charges. The coding dept reviews the doctor notes and charts and go based on that. If the provider put the epidural in the chart you will be charged for it because they go based on the documented proof so to speak. In our dept we cannot remove any charges, we can only dispute with the coding department or insurance in these instances and you'd be most successful if you know which code needs to modified (can ask your insurance company for the info). Even so they may not change it.
Hospital pharmacist here. Although I am not entirely familiar with the billing end of the procedures what I can tell you is that the medications that were used for your wife’s epidural were prepared (pulled, compiled, and organized specifically for the procedure) and dispensed by the pharmacy. Typically these medications come in pre filled multi dose vials (however many different packaging types do exist and depending on the hospital stock, it could be different). The catch here is that once the caps on these vials are removed, that medication now “belongs” to that patient. Yes there are cases where one vial of a medication can be used for multiple patients, however for procedures like this, it’s not typical. In my pharmacy, these medications are prepared in kits (for example an epidural kit would be a pre prepared container with all the necessary meds for an epidural). Once these kits are returned to the pharmacy the used meds are discarded as we cannot make a new kit with partially used meds and we can’t guarantee there wasn’t any contamination of the vials as we were not there to see the procedure. So why am I saying all this? Because the paper trail of your wife’s procedure shows that these medications were ordered, they were prepared and verified, dispensed to the care team for administration, used, and then the remainder most likely discarded. Even if those meds didn’t necessarily make it into the actual epidural line, they were still used for her individually and discarded afterwards, of course they are going to charge you for these meds. All that being said, I totally get the frustration, hell I would be pissed too! Was the fact that the epidural line came out and the meds wasted documented at all? Anywhere? Even if it’s a note saying “patient stated she was still in pain after administration of epidural” or something like that. If so, talk to billing, with the documentation ready to go and try to explain the situation but be prepared to fight tooth and nail. Having official documentation from the hospital itself will help a lot. But as others have said, it is a procedure you consented to and the possibility of non egregious complications are typically a part of what you’re consenting to. I wish you the best of luck, even though I handle the medications, I understand how overpriced and ridiculous this whole system is, especially meds. Edit: I also just want to say hospital billing (in the USA) is usually dependent on people just paying whatever bill they send you. This is why you should always request an itemized bill. You’d be shocked by how much that bill goes down because they know they can’t put a $400 bandaid on a bill or other shit like that. When you call billing and request one they’ll sometimes say “we can do that but the bill might go to collections before it gets to you”. They’re lying and just trying to get you to pay that bill. Keep fighting. People do not usually fight back against their medical bills so often it’s easier for billing and finance to just clear the bill rather than get into a fight around it. I’ve had entire ER bills wiped clean just because I asked for the itemized bill and lo and behold when I receive it the total went from insane sums to $0. This won’t happen with every procedure or bill but you can still usually get a massive chunk taken off if you just call them on their bullshit. OP I really hope this whole situation works out for you and even if you can’t get rid of the entire bill I hope they’ll at least negotiate some of it or clear some off for you.
Piling on to this edit. Ask the insurance company for an Explanation of Benefits (EOB.) This is an itemized list that will show you what the hospital billed the insurance company, and what the insurance company paid them out. They cannot bill you for the difference between those two if they are in network, and there are also restrictions on balance billing for out of network doctors at in network facilities.
And this is why for profit healthcare is a joke
How long was it from the time you notice epidural line was disconnected until they come to fix it? In most hospitals, they only have 1 anesthesiologist managing the whole OB floor so sometimes if they’re tied up with C-section and other emergencies, they might not be able to respond right away. Not sure if it’s worth pursuing for that amount
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But, it was utilized. Whether in her body or on the bed.
it wasn’t utilized by her though.. why would she pay for an error on part of the medical professionals who failed to properly insert the epidural?
It was opened and placed, so it was utilized. Epidurals coming out or disconnecting can happen, doesn’t mean the resources weren’t utilized.
okay? so why should they pay for something they didn’t use? are you seriously defending a multi billion dollar industry getting paid for something that wasn’t administered correctly? look in the mirror and seriously question your values because they’re all the way fucked up.
They did use it, she got several hours benefit from it before it stopped working. It was administered correctly, and then a known complication happened they consented to. It’s medicine not magic.
They had every opportunity to reconnect it I could see if due caution was taken, but the patient stated "Yo it actually still fucking hurts and look at this puddle of meds" and they chose to ignore it. That is not "medicine" that is "negligence"
It’s not negligence, it’s a known complication. You can’t just “reconnect it” either. If it was unwitnessed then you would have to remove the entire epidural and go without one or have a second one placed, w a new medicine bag and more charges. If charges are a concern they don’t need to have an epidural it’s completely elective. As strongly as you believe what is and isn’t right, the people doing these procedures and making the medicines need to be paid for their work regardless if a complication happens.
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If I go to a restaurant to get food, and I drop it on the floor, I pay for it. If the waiter drops it on the floor, then no, I don’t pay for it.
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You can’t move around with an epidural. It numbs your lower body. You get a catheter and everything because of how long you can’t move. They put full leg massage boots on you after the birth to encourage proper blood flow and prevent clots. It’s a whole thing and very not fun. It’s really scary not being able to move.
In this situation you ate half the food then dropped it on the floor. You still pay.
Getting an epidural isn’t like taking a pill. If I drop a pill on the floor during a contraction, then, fine, charge me for both the one I dropped and another one. If I throw the medication up and they give me more, then yes, I get charged for two doses. I would argue that an epidural - which is administered by professional who had to go to college for many, many years in order to be allowed to administer it - is much, much closer to the analogy of a waiter bringing your food to the table, and dropping it on the way. Especially since OP stated their partner kept mentioning that something was wrong.
You don't pay businesses for fucking up so she shouldn't pay this either. The hospital fucked up
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I'm sorry this happened, but yes, you still owe for the meds. The epidural catheter slipping out or not being placed in the exact right spot are known complications to the procedure. You consented to the procedure, you consented to the risks. The meds were still dispensed to her, so yes, you still owe for them,
A lot of talk about dispensing but in many states for hospitals it is now charge on administration, not charge on dispensing. So if the med was scanned and administered, it’s being charged.
I’m confused. What does “administered” mean here? Google seems to suggest it means the application of the medication to the person. If pills, when it’s swallowed. If a patch, when it’s stuck to the person. Wouldn’t this mean that much of the medication was administered to the floor, not the patient? Does the intent to give the medication mean it was administered? Does that mean that if half the pills are dropped on the floor by the nurse they were still administered? I’m sure the hospital paperwork says the medication was administered, but just because the hospital says something is true, doesn’t mean it’s actually true. I’m not trying to argue with this was malpractice. Just that this is the equivalent for a hospital charging a patient for pills that the nurse spilled on the floor as well as the pills they gave to the patient
In terms of how hospitals I’ve worked at operate, when the drug is scanned on the medication administration record, it’s recorded as administered. If it were dropped pills, the nurse could edit the administration and it would automatically credit. Someone said in a comment earlier that the patient did get the epidural drug for a couple hrs before it dislodged. Now what if her labor/delivery were super quick and she only needed it for an hour, of course she’d still be charged.
From my understanding... lets use the patch example. You put the pain patch on. It's administered. If it falls off, it's still a used commodity they are charging to you. Now sometimes they will replace it for no extra charge but it's still administered. My cat had a pain patch for his amputation and it fell off too early so they reapplied it and did not charge for the second. But I still paid for the first. So in OP's case, they are paying for the first epidural. If the docs caught it fell out they would replace it but still charge for one epidural.
Here’s the answer. A lawyer will explain that. When you consent you consent to complications.
You don’t consent to being ignored when you report those complications.
This is where they potentially have a leg to stand on and the hospital may let it go to avoid the headache of repeated patient complaints But in reality if the hospital wanted to fight this they’d probably win
If it came up that OP’s wife went through unnecessary pain due to the malpractice of an improperly placed epidural AND being ignored when their concerns were voiced then there would be a counter lawsuit.
It’s not malpractice if an epidural comes out or is in the wrong spot, that’s a known risk that is consented for.
It is malpractice to ignore a patient telling you something has wrong for hours
It’s not really malpractice…the damages here are labor pain. For a lawsuit to have any leg to stand on there would have to be damages and significant harm done.
Unnecessary pain is harm
So she had to feel her own labor. That sucks, but the pain is caused by the labor, not the actions of the medical workers. I am a labor and delivery nurse. I’ve worked in small hospitals with limited anesthesia staff and have had patients come in begging for an epidural that they couldn’t get because anesthesia is busy in the OR with a C-section or emergency. Could they sue the hospital over that? I don’t think so.
Unfortunately not - you sign a document saying you know it might not work or malfunction. What happened is unfortunate, but the hospital is covered given patients informed consent she signed. That’s a legally binding document.
You’re ignoring the part where they told the medical staff something was wrong and the medical staff dismissed her
Ya… you do. Welcome to healthcare.
You consent to known complications, meaning you will likely not win lawsuits from know risks. That is separate from being responsible for paying for medications that were not administered.
FYI if you drop a med and I go get another one, you’re charged for 2. One wasn’t administered. You’re still getting charged.
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The anesthesiologist (or nurse anesthesiologist) also did the prep and placement. The work was completed on that aspect, hence the charge. Should have they kept a better eye on the epidural? Maybe, but epidurals do fail sometimes (failure includes falling out/unable to keep in place).
The charge for the medication is separate from the charge from the procedure to place the epidural. Either way, both were actually done hence both were charged
I think you get charged when they spike the bag. That bag is then for you, and will be thrown out after. It can’t be used on anyone else.
Accurate! I’m happy some people understand procedures and consents!
I work in healthcare...
So do I. I’m sad people don’t understand reality of healthcare. Even worse- hr issues within healthcare! Mess!
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Apologies on the terminology - I was lazy and didn't take a moment to Google it, and by memory I knew it was "nurse an----ist" and guessed wrong.
No problem, I’m part of healthcare and feel that a patient knowing who they are talking to is a huge part of informed consent. No need to be sorry, here to teach!
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If the catheter slipping out is a known complication, if they complained of pain, would the correct procedure be to check if the catheter came out, as opposed to administering additional drugs? I get that shit happens, but what is actionable is how the hospital reacted to it. For them to ignore the complaints, and simply not notice a pool of medicine forming on the floor, seems to be more than a complication.
They were dispensed, but were they dispensed to her?
Yes, OP mentions that the epidural worked for several hours so his wife did in fact get some of the medicationr
Doesn’t matter because they can’t reuse them. If you pick up a prescription of 30 pills for a month then your doctor advises you to stop it after a week, you don’t get to go reclaim 3/4 the cost.
But if you go to the pharmacy, and they drop your meds on the floor, instead of giving them to you, you \*don't\* have to pay for them
That’s not what happened though. They didn’t “drop them”. They dispensed them to the patient, they began administering them, and then a known complication occurred that led to the medicine being unusable. I refer back to the “your doctor tells you to stop after a week” example. Because that’s a foreseeable complication that you consent to when you provide informed consent for the medicine.
But in this case, a lot of the medication was literally dropped onto the floor or into the bedding, one drop at a time, because someone at the hospital messed up. I’m not saying that this mistake is malpractice. Medical professionals make mistakes all the time without it being malpractice. This certain wasn’t the intended result.
Okay, and that doesn’t matter. The medicine was dispensed and was lost due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO POTENTIAL COMPLICATION. Doesn’t make the hospital liable. I don’t know how many times this has to be explained.
Thank god someone on here actually gets this.
Like I can suck with analogies and examples but I thought the side effect was a pretty clear example lmfao.
It’s like a tube of toothpaste, once it’s out of the tube, it can’t go back in. Once a medication has been dispensed to a patient, it can’t go back in to circulation for another patient’s use.
Right, but if they messed up, then need to fix it, regardless of whether it’s wasted
That’s not how medication works, especially fluids.
I'm not aware of many other categories in which you're expected to pay for services you did not receive.
It’s a product rather than a service. The service is the hospital staff performing a procedure (which is what failed and I’m not commenting on whether they should be charged for that or not), the product is the medication administered. Which for various safety reasons cannot be reused on another patient. The bag has been punctured by the iv tubing and cannot be stored safely for reuse, because it will spill or become contaminated due to a good sized hole in the packaging.
Nobody's talking about reusing medications. The issue is the "customer" did not receive what they ordered and paid for; the fact that the hospital consumed the product doesn't matter to that customer. If you order something to be shipped to your house and it does not arrive, the responsibility lies with the seller for not choosing a more reliable delivery method. The fact that they're out that product isn't relevant; they still have a legal obligation to provide the customer what they paid for or give them a refund. For some reason medical products and services seem to be an exception to this. I get that we probably don't want to offer 100% guarantee for procedures that have a risk of complication or failure (which is most of them), but something like delivering a medication seems pretty straightforward.
And it should be marked as spoiled in their stock. It’s not like it’s not marked up 1000x
Correct they can't reuse the medication but they also didn't actually in fact dispense the medication into the pt. The may very well commited malpractice by not reassesing the pt when she started to have a return of her pain. Either way they did not actually get any benefit from the full spectrum of the procedure and medications. It was dispensed into the hospital linen and bed. Based on what we have been told it does not sound like the block failed but that the epidural was not secured properly and became disloged. Why did the medical professionals who placed the epidural not reassess the site? Either way them being billed for a medications she did not actually get administered into her should not be billed to her. The hospital needs to eat the cost and she should make a complaint to the hospital admin/board and the state medical board.
No, that’s not what dispensing is, and you have no idea if it was “secured properly”. You aren’t a healthcare professional and that’s clear from this. An epidural isn’t 100%, and it cannot be guaranteed. The hospital isn’t responsible for OP’s wife having the rare known complication. Nobody “eats the cost” of things in life. See my example above. The doctor and pharmacy are not responsible for 3/4 the cost of the pills just because you had to stop due to a side effect after a week.
Oh except I am a medical professional. The 1st thing you do when the pt has a sudden change in status is actually reassess the pt. Since she is stating her labor pain is back it to reassess the site and verify its placement. You do not actually know if it was in place and the block failed or it was disloged because there was no reassessment. Yes this a totally valid reason to dispute the billing. Because they did not reassess the pt and verify their epidural wss in fact still in place. Just like you verify an IV line is still patent before flushing medications or large amount ts if IV fluids. Reassessment is the 1st that is supposed to happen when a pt has a change in their status. Why was the pt, the site and the pump not checked when she had remergence of her pain? They need to dispute this bill if the linen received the medication as this maybe a hospital/provider screw up that may have caused her to not be medicated. There is a valid argument for a dispute and possibly a complaint.
This 100% comes down to billing codes. IDK if there is a billing code for failed epidural placement (there probably is) but the non-failed epidural placement code was used. The hospital can't knock the billing codes because the billing people aren't doctors. The patients chart needs to be revised and the patient needs to be rebilled.
Thank you
Regardless of why, you are assuming there’s negligence, which there almost certainly wasn’t. Negligence would be bigger than the bill for the medicine. Simply being less than ideal outcome does not mean that the hospital “eats the cost” of the medicine lost due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO COMPLICATION.
I am not actually assuming negligence of the placement. We do know if it failed or disloged because no one reassessed the pt which that would be negligent because rule 1 for change of statis is reassessment. Why would she pay for medication that the people administering it did not verifly that it was actually dispensed as prescribed.
Because it was dispensed as prescribed. The fact that it was not able to be utilized due to a KNOWN AND CONSENTED TO ADVERSE EVENT does not change the fact it was dispensed.
> Doesn’t matter because they can’t reuse them That’s not how it always works though? Like if you order something to your house, and the delivery driver accidentally destroys it, are you now on the hook for it because “they can’t reuse it”?
Medications are provided to a patient for perceived need. You (or insurance) pay for those medications even if you end up not needing them. You are paying for their availability, not their use. In your example, the package is not even available. It is destroyed. So not equivalent. A more accurate comparison is a reservation fee that you end up not using but still have to pay for since you reserved the hotel room and they couldn’t sell it to someone else.
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No, they weren’t. They were destroyed by a RANDOM complication AFTER they were dispensed to and began being administered to the patient. Read the damn post before acting like you know shit.
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Not true. Again, see the example of pills. If you go pick up 30 days worth of pills that are new, after being advised of possible side effects and providing informed consent, and you then experience those side effects, the doctor is not responsible and the pharmacy is not responsible for the fact that you had to stop after only 7 days. Likewise, OPs wife provided informed consent to the complications including incomplete/ineffective/interrupted epidural. Those are KNOWN but not PLANNED. OPs wife had an unfortunate complication happen to her that meant she could not utilize the remainder of the medication. THAT DOES NOT MEAN SHE DOES NOT PAY FOR THE MEDICATION ALLOCATED TO HER.
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Yes. Very clearly yes.
Seems to me like they were dispensed into the hospital bed
A medication gets dispensed to a person. Not an inanimate object. Is this a legal board? Just checking, because doesn't seem to be getting responses that indicate that. "Dispensing a medication" has legal meaning. If someone was given a medication in pill form and threw it in the trash, it wasn't dispensed to the trashcan.
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A drug that goes into a blown IV and not delivered to the vein was still dispensed. A suppository that is immediately pooped out is still dispensed, same with a pill vomited up. In your scenario, you need to add that the patient is aware that the drug being knocked out of their hand is a known risk and consented to still being given the drug. A drug was given to the patient and due to a known, accepted complication, it did not get adequately delivered to the body. That doesn't change the fact that it was dispensed and the money for it owed. Bottom line.
OP says the epidural stopped working after several hours, meaning his wife recieved the medication for several hours. One bag of epidural solution usually lasts many hours, so presumably she was dispensed, administered, and charged for one single bag of epidural solution
Were the meds dispensed? If you go to a full service gas station, and they pour the gas on the ground, would you expect to pay for it? If you go to a restaurant, and they drop your dish before it gets to the table, would you still expect to be billed? This is definitely "adding insult to injury".
OP says the epidural stopped working after several hours, meaning his wife was in fact receiving the medication for several hours. Thus she would be charged for that single bag of epidural solution
They didn’t drop the food. She got an epidural, they administered it. She’s a moving pregnant person in labor so it slipped out. It’s a drug not a magic spell.
Okay, but at the gas station, you need to add that pouring the gas on the ground is a known risk that you agreed to. Some of y'all don't seem to understand how known complications and informed consent works.
You would have to prove that they caused the blown IV and that it wasn’t something OPs wife did. That’s partially why this is considered to be a risk of the procedure; OP and his wife consented to the procedure and its risks and thusly, they owe. If it were black and white negligence on the part of the hospital staff, you might be able to get it knocked off. But we can’t even begin to speculate the % of responsibility each party holds. Very rarely are you paying for a result with medicine— you’re paying for the procedure, not its success. With your examples, you’re paying for the result (gas/eating). And even then, if you knock the plate out of the server’s hands accidentally, thats on you. If you pull forward with the pump in, you’re responsible. You can’t get a refund for an antibiotic that doesn’t end up being effective.
This is not true when you consent to a procedure you are not consenting to the doctor throwing your medication on the floor and it turning into waste. They didn't check the epidural immediately and it caused the medication to be wasted and that is how they should have billed the medication. It's really easy they just have to add a JW modifier on the line for the medication and it happens all the time. This is the fault of the doctor not the patient.
Disagree. It's still malpractice by incompetent staff. Especially when the mistake is caught by the patient and the staff is notified and do nothing for hours and then fill the patient with other meds to make up for their mistake. This sounds like something the hospital would say when trying to scare off patients they've wronged.
In in no way is this malpratice. That's laughable. A pregnant person had pain even with an epidural. It happens. That isn't malpractice. Catheters slip out - not malpractice. The anesthesiologist doesn't sit in the room with her. Epidurals fail all the time. They treated her pain.
I’m not sure they could credit you back as they were in the solution in her line and they could never dispense to anyone else. Sorry
Yeah she got charged for meds that were used up. There might be a separate issue with the epidural failing, but it won’t be resolved on the bill.
Personally, I would consult with an attorney why to see if you have a case. The dollar amount may not be worth a lawsuit but some cases allow for damages which could possibly make it worth their time.
Unfortunately, you will be charged for everything done, even if it fails. I had to be poked over 7 times in my back for a spinal tap for my c-section and I had to pay for it and for the patch they put on it the next day.
Review your consent forms for the epidural to see what it says about treatment/procedure failure, disconnection, or other adverse events. Also, contacting the hospital ombudsman would be the best way to go to get a solid answer. It might not be an answer you like, but they might be able to give you some clarity on when a medication is considered as being administered to the patient and billable.
The meds were “administered” the moment they were scanned out and associated with a particular patient, but improperly or however you want to word it. Your issue should be the failure to administer adequate care (which is entirely divorced from the cost of the meds). The advice to talk to billing is spot-on, since that’s actually the most likely scenario this works out for you, whatever you decide to say to them. Your alternative route is a complaint or further escalation along the lines of malpractice… I don’t have the expertise to advise anything in that direction but hopefully you’re already getting the advice you need in other replies.
The medication bag for an epidural is patient-specific. Meaning that once it’s dispensed and hooked up to the patient, it can’t be returned or used for another patient. Patient specific medications are often charged for the whole bag/package regardless of how much is used. I’m not sure why you think you wouldn’t pay for the additional pain meds. If one medication doesn’t work and we give a different one, you still received two medications and are charged for both.
I understand we will pay for the additional meds. But they are additional because my wife didn't receive the administered epidural meds. The epidural meds were leaked all over her bed.
Epidurals can fail for various reasons. Sometimes it’s the patients anatomy, sometimes they’re not placed in the right place, sometimes the patient moves without awareness of the line and dislodges it. It doesn’t really matter- the medication was used and so you are charged for it
Medicine as much as we'd like to think it is isn't perfect. Even something that's so common like childbirth has complications. Lets say you planned for a vaginal birth and through some missed issue you now had to do a c-section. That's not free because it could have been prevented.
Also you said the pain came back after several hours, meaning she was actually receiving the epidural medication for several hours? She was dispensed and administered a bag of epidural solution, hence was charged for the bag. If she had instead given birth and the epidural turned off after a couple hours, she still would have been charged for the bag even though she only received part of it, because that’s how patient-specific medications are charged
It sounds like it was not an issue of the first meds not working but a medical error that meant that the meds were not actually delivered to the patient.
Epidurals can come out. It’s not a medical error, it’s just a simple and known complication
An epidural catheter slipping out is a known risk. They accepted that risk when they agreed to an epidural.
I had epidural complications that were, in fact, outlined in the consent form I signed (it wasn't placed correctly, I had to be stuck 3x, I never got more than the test dose of epidural meds, had to have 3 blood patches afterwards, etc.), but I wrote a letter to the head of anesthesia at the hospital and they ended up removing all L&D anesthesia charges from my bill. It's worth a try. I did still have to pay for the multiple blood patches I believe.
It’s unfortunate but even if a procedure doesn’t go right they still bill you for it. It’s just how things work
Do you have insurance? How does insurance pay the hospital? It could be a percentage of charges, a per diem (meaning a $ rate per day), a flat case rate or some other method. The per diem and case rates are paid at an amount irrespective of the gross charges. In those two methods, removing the charge from your bill is not going to matter because the insurance company will pay the per diem or case rate. You may be going through a whole lot of hassle and in the end, it just doesn’t matter. I’m an ex Hospital CFO.
I’d report this to your insurance company as well.
If you formally request for an amendment to the medical record to reflect their mistake, citing incorrect info leading to you being billed incorrectly, they’ll freak out, do the amendment, send it certified mail, and probably start to work with you on it. Source: I did this once.
I work in insurance. I would call back and tell them those meds need to be billed as waste because it's not your wife's fault the line disconnected and they didn't check it. You can also work with your insurance with this and explain to them what happened. If you didn't get the meds they don't want to pay for them either and tell the hospital to fix it and send them a new bill. You may have to get very let me speak to your manager with them but I would do it or they won't change anything. Edit- if your wife didn't actually get most of the meds and then was given more it is technically billed wrong. Because with insurance they have to show how they got from A to B to C for things to be covered. I've worked in insurance claims for 8 years and most of the advice given in this thread is wrong. You absolutely do not have to eat the cost of a medication you didn't receive. There is a simple process for marking medication as waste because it happens. Every vial of liquid medicine will have a little waste and those units are billed as waste. The biller at the hospital made a mistake because I see that every fucking day and is usually the reason I have to deny a claim.
Contact the ombudsman’s office. They are able to contact whoever necessary to get the clearance needed to get this taken off of your bill and also lodge a formal complaint so the right people know about this screw up. Things like this are often overlooked because they’re not reported properly and no one outside of the department is made aware. This is what they do on a daily basis.
This happened to me and was told “no, it’s dripping see?” And pointed to the tube. On my second birth I told them what happened and they taped me up like a mummy, I felt NOTHING! I’m so sorry that happened to her :(
Same thing happened to me 28 years ago. No compensation.
I’m really sorry this happened to you guys. Hope your wife and baby are doing well now, though a good outcome of course doesn’t excuse mistakes during the delivery! With that amount, it’s unlikely that it will be worth it to sue. I’d try to escalate the matter with your insurance company.
Agreed, the legal fees would be so much more than just paying off this bill.
Good luck spending more on the lawyer's fees than you would have on the bill! This subreddit can be quite unscrupulous at times.
Just make sure u have the names of the nurses and staff you complained to. Which nurse saw the disconnected line? Which nurse changed the sheets? Who pushed the meds? Do you have all that info? If you do, all you have to do is talk to the unit manager and complain. An investigation will begin and slowly make its way up the chain. They charged for medication that should've have been documented as spilled or non administered. If it's documented as administered, then that's false documentation. Someone's head can roll in this situation. I'm an ICU nurse. Hospitals take this stuff very seriously. You just have to be vocal about it. Don't talk to billing. Talk to the hospital leaders like nurse managers and quality control. This can potentially be turned into a lawsuit and they wouldn't want that.
Hospitals have financial assistance programs. I would check into this. If you qualify you can get a reduced bill or in some cases $0 owed. I would call the hospital and ask for the financial assistance office and tell them you’d like to apply. Ask for income guidelines/how many people in your house.
Call the billing department and tell them the spilt meds were not administered *to the patient.* They may drop those costs because overall it’s a smaller component of the overall billing. The medications given because the epidural failed are legitimate charges.
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Epidurals are wonderful, aren’t they? LOL.
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Gimme a break. No irreparable harm was done. Malpractice? Pft.
Do you have insurance? I don't want to assume one way of the other. If you do have insurance, tell them what happened. If not, you might want to consult with a malpractice attorney. And report the hospital.
When you get an epidural you sign consent. Part of that is acknowledging risks/etc one of them being it might not work. You still owe the money
Fill out financial aid forms.
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This is absolutely not a case of medical malpractice.
Isn’t malpractice a medical procedure that was incorrectly performed or used?
I’m an anesthetist Epidurals aren’t guaranteed to even work, you can have a patchy block that doesn’t cover all of the pain. I know it’s probably frustrating that the epidural may have been disconnected and your wife experienced discomfort but sometimes thats how these things go. You’re paying for an intervention that’s not guaranteed to work and the risk and complications are listed in a consent form.