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Surgery and insurance stupidity
Nov. 8th, 2011 05:15 pmThe surgery went fine yesterday. It took about 3 hours and was a bit more complicated than they thought. They found about 10 infected sutures and kept following them and found about 10 more that they cut out along with some tissue to leave an infection-free zone. There was no mesh left to take out. The wound has been left open and is on a wound vac machine, which she'll have for about 8 weeks. That's the short of it. It's not a permanent solution to all the problems, but it should be the end to this latest issue.
Celeste and I stayed over in a Best Western last night so we could be here to take her home today. That was the plan anyway. Monique is going to need visiting nurses for a while to clean out the wound vac every 3 days. Just as the discharge was going through, the hospital got a denial of the visiting nurse benefit and thus wouldn't let her go home.
She has been on the phone for a couple of hours with her insurance trying to get this fixed. Apparently, all the weeks of IV she had at home, applying it herself, was charged to her annual home care charges and she's used it up. She's fighting it out with the insurance company now and is making progress, but not in time to go home. So, since the insurance *will* pay for another very expensive overnight stay and they won't pay for the home nurse visit, we're "enjoying" another night of hospital care on the insurance company. Yes, they're choosing the expensive hospital bill over the $115 nurse's visit. And we wonder why our insurance fees are so high *sigh*
And to make matters worse, the permanent wound vac machine she's going to have was already shipped to our house in Monroe CT to arrive tomorrow morning. Someone, either me or Celeste has to go to Monroe and bring the machine back to NYC for them to hook her up to it to go home, so I'm going to have to use another day of vacation.
Celeste and I stayed over in a Best Western last night so we could be here to take her home today. That was the plan anyway. Monique is going to need visiting nurses for a while to clean out the wound vac every 3 days. Just as the discharge was going through, the hospital got a denial of the visiting nurse benefit and thus wouldn't let her go home.
She has been on the phone for a couple of hours with her insurance trying to get this fixed. Apparently, all the weeks of IV she had at home, applying it herself, was charged to her annual home care charges and she's used it up. She's fighting it out with the insurance company now and is making progress, but not in time to go home. So, since the insurance *will* pay for another very expensive overnight stay and they won't pay for the home nurse visit, we're "enjoying" another night of hospital care on the insurance company. Yes, they're choosing the expensive hospital bill over the $115 nurse's visit. And we wonder why our insurance fees are so high *sigh*
And to make matters worse, the permanent wound vac machine she's going to have was already shipped to our house in Monroe CT to arrive tomorrow morning. Someone, either me or Celeste has to go to Monroe and bring the machine back to NYC for them to hook her up to it to go home, so I'm going to have to use another day of vacation.
