This is not a review of the radiologists who provide services for Midwest Radiological Associates…read more In my experience (at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, but they handle a number of area hospitals), they're a great bunch of docs. No, it's a review of the company that handles billing for them. Dealing with them is difficult enough for a healthy person. If you're sick, if you've got chemo brain, if you're stressed, it's almost impossible.
The first problem with MRA is that every single procedure gets its own account number, and its own bill. There's no such thing as a single piece of paper with every procedure, along with the amount owed, listed on it. The payment procedure, when you need to work with an agent, is inexcusably time-consuming and complex.
If you call in to pay a bill, make sure you ask if they have any more outstanding bills for you, because they won't tell you. I found that out the hard way more than eight years ago, when I was newly diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer, on my own, and horribly sick from chemotherapy. I called in and paid several bills, but missed one - and they turned me over to collection for less than $20, without so much as sending a second notice.
I recently got a bill from a collection agency for MRA. This puzzled me, since I knew I'd paid what I owed. I tried to call MRA, but didn't have the account number, and couldn't get through. I wrote to them, twice, via their website; nobody bothered to get back to me. Finally, today, I played with their automated phone system and managed to get through to a sympathetic human being.
I was shocked by what I learned.
Last spring, by now Stage IV and again in chemo, I had more scans. When the bills came in, I called to pay them. And I did pay them.
But the credit card payment on one didn't go through. And instead of calling me, or emailing me, or mailing me a letter, MRA just sat on it. They did not send out a second notice (as far as I can tell, they just don't do that). Instead, they waited five months, and then turned it over to collection.
This is inexplicable and upsetting. It's also unhelpful and anti-consumer. As if the medical system and health insurance were too easy to navigate, Midwest Radiological Associates has taken it upon themselves to find a way to make it even harder. Shame on them.