This place is a racket and a disgrace. I thought I lost my contact in my eye so I went to Cayuga Medical Center to make sure it wasn't going to calcify or whatever. I have an HMO in California that doesn't extend out of state. I was there for 20 minutes and saw a nurse practitioner named Emily Williams who gave me some eyedrops and looked at my eye. I never saw a physician. I asked if I could just pay the bill as I was leaving and they said no, they needed to go through their standard billing process.
Cut to nine months later when I get a bill from Cayuga's billing provider (Schumacher Clinical Partners) for $716. WHAT?! Turns out that even though I saw a nurse practitioner, I was charged for a physician visit because they "only have one billing code." So, I asked, if I broke my leg instead of just had an irritated eyeball, I would've been charged the same? "Yes," they confirmed.
Over the last four months, I've been in correspondence with Cayuga's billing company, Schumacher, because 1) Cayuga Medical Center is just the building apparently and they don't have anything to do with billing, and 2) the providers (i.e., physician & nurse practitioner) are the ones who make the decisions about what to charge, and they use Schumacher to collect on their invoices (and, I suspect, to act as a buffer so they aren't confronted by irate patients). I have never been allowed to speak directly with the physician or the nurse practitioner because, I was told, "they don't deal with administrative issues." WHAT?! Do you see how this is a shell game?
In January, I filed a complaint and my bill was reduced to $358 by a "patient advocate" that I'm not allowed to speak with directly. Today, nearly a full year after my visit, I was told that the only way I'm going to get this resolved is to pay the $358 charge for someone to have looked at my eyeball.
And, keep in mind that this is all done by a third party employed by the physicians who work at Cayuga. It's a total sham.
Honestly, we spend so much time talking about how medical coverage is crazy in the US but what we really need to do is look at people and companies like Cayuga & Schumacher who milk the system and make it as bloated and ridiculous as it is. $358 for eye drops!! Un-effing-believable. I don't know how they live with themselves. read more