My experience with the finance and scheduling departments at Cleveland Clinic has been abysmal…read more My surgeon scheduled my surgery at one CC in Stuart Fl for late November and I was told I was all set. Then I got a pre-surgery bill from CC that said I had to prepay $55,000 even though the procedure is covered by my insurance. When I inquired of the CC financial office, I was told that CC was not in network for my insurer, Aetna. I called Aetna who said that CC was in their network. I had CC and Aetna conference, and Aetna confirmed that CC was out of network. I called my insurance agent who researched and said that, because CC had acquired so many of the local hospitals in Florida, it was possible that the particular one my doctor chose had not yet been accepted. I took the agent's suggestion and asked my surgeon's office to check another CC hospital in the area and sure enough, that one was in network, so we re-scheduled the surgery.
A few days later, I got another email from the finance office at CC saying that I had to prepay $44,000. While less than the previous amount, it still made no sense. I asked my surgeon's office to intervene and find out why they were asking me to prepay for a covered surgery. The surgeon's scheduler said that CC did not know why my insurance was not accepted but gave me a "patient advocate" phone number to call.
I called the patient advocate number, and it was 15 minutes with the advocate before he realized that I was not in Ohio. He gave me a patient advocate number for Florida.
The patient advocate in Florida quickly had an answer for me. I was being billed by CC for the surgery because they wouldn't know what Aetna's coverages were for 2025 until after January 1 (it was now December 19th). She said that If I called January 2, they would have a definitive answer for me regarding coverage for my surgery.
Meanwhile, the CC scheduler called me and suggested that I keep the date of my surgery, January 10 along with the appointments for blood labs and pre-op on January 3rd and the medical clearance appointment on January 7. This way, she theorized, I wouldn't risk a long delay for the next available surgery date.
At 9 am on January 2, I called the patient advocate and was given the finance department and the person said she had to do a little more checking into the coverages but would definitely call back that day. I reminded her that the call back was essential since my pre-op appointment was at 7:45 am the next morning and I did not want to keep that appointment unless I was assured that it was covered by my insurance.
I didn't get the call, and it was approaching 4 pm so I called them back. After the annoying 10-minute hold, I was told that I needed to download my insurance card because the one they had showed an issue date that was too old. I asked if they could just check with Aetna to confirm that I was covered. They said they couldn't.
At this point, it was time for me to pull the plug on Cleveland Clinic. I asked this person to cancel my surgery and all of my appointments. She said she would switch me to the scheduler who could take care of that. The recording told me which number to press which I did but it then hung up on me. I called again and informed the person that I wanted to cancel everything and told her in general terms it was because CC's bureaucracy was driving me loony. She apologized that I had such a bad experience and said she would cancel everything.
A half hour later, the scheduler called me back and said the CC finance department said I couldn't cancel the surgery, only my doctor could. I don't know if it was deliberate, but by now, my doctor's office was closed so I had to leave a message and hope they cancelled it before the appointment so that the incompetents at CC finance don't send me a bill for missing the appointment. If they do, I plan to file in small claims court.
Yelp won't let me give a no-star review so I gave one star so I could post this. It should have minus stars.
Dan Hogan
Stuart Florida
